Earth to Earth
by Ravenclaw42
Summary: Set after the end of the anime. Knives wakes up to a case of amnesia so severe he can't even remember how to move or speak. Vash can teach him how to be human... but is that really the contrived Eden Vash wants? R for violence and implied yaoi (KxL).
1. Fool's Paradise

The Amazing Universal Disclaimer: Don't own it. Won't own it. Can't own it. The end.  
  
Author's Note:  
A little history seems called for before we begin...  
  
This fic started as your Average Joe Fic, the typical post-anime, Knives-redemption, second-generation-of-Gung-Ho-Guns, Vash/Meryl fic. Don't get me wrong -- a lot of my favorite Trigun fics are exactly like that, and they're excellent. But there's the problem -- I didn't _want_ to write the same thing that a bunch of other people had already done better than me. A couple of months ago, I was desperate for something new -- from a new art medium, to a new writing style, to learning a new language -- I didn't care, I was just sick of always doing all my artwork the same way, be it drawing or writing.  
  
Then we started reading John Steinbeck's _The Grapes of Wrath_ in my AP English class.  
  
I cannot begin to explain how deeply this book affected me. I can't recommend it highly enough to those who haven't read it, and to those who have -- well, I think you'll have some idea of what this fic will be like now. I've drawn on a lot of _Grapes of Wrath_-esque elements while outlining this fic, one of which was the idea of having every other chapter take place _outside_ the main plotline. Either chronologically or physically, each even-numbered chapter will _not_ focus on the main plot. Also, characters may come and go without warning, and never have any relevance to the plot again. Basically, I'm just going nuts with my artistic license and breaking as many rules and standards as I can. So... read at your own risk. .  
  
And by God, even though I have major issues concerning actually _finishing_ the fics I start, this bloody thing _will_ get out of my head if I have to force it out at gunpoint. has a determined look as she settles in for the long haul on this monstrosity So, ladies and gentlemen... enjoy the show.  
  
--------  
Chapter One: Fool's Paradise  
--------  
  
Vash... Vash.  
  
Is he waking up?  
  
I think so.  
  
I'll get the water.  
  
The ground bounced. Not ground -- it was too soft. Car seat. The backseat of a Jeep. His feet knocked against the far door, and his knees were stiff. Too tall to lay down inside without scrunching up.  
  
Sore... aching all over. Body and mind, both hurt. Everything hurt.  
  
Then a small hand sliding under his neck, fingers tangling in his matted hair, pulling out strands with little stinging pops. Skin on skin was too hot; as soon as the hand touched him, sweat broke out, and he tried to protest, flinching away.  
  
The owner of the hand heard the weak sound he made, barely above a whisper, and hesitated.  
  
Is he okay? Did he just try to talk?  
  
I can't tell.  
  
The hand shifted against his neck, even more unpleasant than before. Now his neck felt like it was on fire, but his forehead was cold and clammy. He shivered. His arms were cold, too... why were his arms bare? His coat was always warm... even in the freezing desert night, always warm and red and comforting.  
  
It was gone. Coat, gun, innocence, sanity. Gone.  
  
Another hand settled across his forehead, first the back of the hand, then the palm. Fingers brushed his damp hair out of his face, tucked some of it behind his ears, smoothed the rest of it back.  
  
The fever's worse.  
  
How far is it to Terma?  
  
We'll never make it in time.  
  
But where else can we go? Terma and December have the only hospitals that might take him... the only places too crowded for him to be recognized.  
  
I know, I know... but December's too far. We have to get to Terma.  
  
The hand on his forehead retreated, but the hand on his neck only slid around further, getting a firmer grip on the back of his head. He wished it would let go.  
  
Head tilting forward... something damp brushing against his cracked lips... liquid heaven pouring into his mouth. He swallowed reflexively. It burned going down, making him cough up grit and bile. His head spun from the involuntary spasms, his diaphragm tightening painfully, constricting his lungs. He gasped, struck with a momentary irrational panic -- he couldn't breathe, couldn't get a full lungful of air. Then the same hand that had touched his forehead pressed into his throat, massaging the constricted area until it relaxed, opening up bit by bit until he could breathe again.  
  
Give him another drink.  
  
Sempai... we're low on water.  
  
He needs it more than we do. He can't get dehydrated. Give it to him.  
  
This time it went down easier, easing the acid, rasping pain of the bile that had come up when he'd coughed. The water bottle retreated after three swallows, though, much to his chagrin. Whoever was holding his head up lowered it back down to the car seat. After a little while, the combination of the water sloshing in his mostly-empty stomach, his position flat on his back, and the bumping, rolling motion of the Jeep made him feel even sicker than he had before. He wished he could sit up, but he couldn't move.  
  
We're almost out of gas.  
  
Isn't there a gas can in the back?  
  
It's not enough. Only half full. If the speedometer on this junk heap isn't messed up, we've still got three hundred iles to go.  
  
The voices faded in and out of his hearing. The irritation of being folded up like an accordion was getting to him. He tried to relieve some of the stiffness in his legs by turning onto his side, but as soon as he started tensing muscles in his legs and abdomen, a wave of nausea punched through his guts like a sledgehammer. He gagged, tensing reflexively, which in turn made the sickness worse.  
  
  
  
The Jeep jerked a little to the side as the driver balked at the sharp tone of the other's voice.  
  
Don't scare me like that -- what is it?  
  
He's getting sicker!  
  
I can't do anything! The voice sounded helpless, scared. If he looks like he's gonna puke, get his head out the door, at least!  
  
Mr. Vash? Mr. Vash!  
  
But the nausea was subsiding, only a couple of dry retches marking its passing. The nasty taste of bile tainted the back of his throat again. He longed for more water, for stillness and solitude and cool skin. He didn't remember any of those things. The Jeep was hot, his body was sweltering, the water that was cool going down was only getting warmer the longer it was in him; he was miserable.  
  
Maybe it'd help if he sat up for a while?  
  
Anything -- anything. Don't let him throw up if you can help it. He can't afford to be any more dehydrated.  
  
Strong arms around his body now, lifting him up. His stiff knees protested being unbent -- they'd been that way for hours. But the less horizontal he got, the more his stomach settled, and for that he was infinitely grateful. Sore muscles couldn't compare with the relief of not feeling like he was about to choke on his own vomit at any second.  
  
Mr. Vash -- please be all right.  
  
Inane, quiet, pleading words that fell on uncomprehending ears. Something was horribly wrong, but he didn't know what it was, and he had the strangest sensation that he should remember something that hadn't happened yet, but he couldn't get a grip on it... and the world spun a little for a second, but the dizzy spell passed, and then he was leaning slumped against a familiar body that he couldn't quite recognize. Vision was going blurry. Sleep? Blackout? What was wrong?  
  
There were four people in the Jeep.  
  
For some reason, that was the last thought that penetrated his sick, fatigued mind before he passed out.  
  
---------  
  
We're almost there! Wake him up, if you can --  
  
Waking was like wading through a boiling tar pit. Everything was hot -- black -- sticky -- nauseating.  
  
Mr. Vash -- Mr. Vash -- look. It's your ship. You'll be all better soon...  
  
Your ship. It echoed in his mind, mushed around in his head like bubble gum caught in the gears of a jaw. There was something strange about that possessive. _Your_ ship...  
  
Someone moved, turned. His eyes had unstuck themselves to where he could just see a faint line of light through his sunburned lids, so that when the person in front of him moved, he could see a little blur of shadow that might have been a misshapen silhouette. Even that tiny hint of light was enough to send sharp stabs of pain through his temples, though, so he closed his eyes again, trying to will his body to cool down and failing miserably.  
  
  
  
Ten more minutes, tops. Try to get him sitting up again.  
  
Are you sure there'll be a doctor there?  
  
Hesitation; hands clenched around the steering wheel, white-knuckled. There has to be. He talked about a doctor when he told me... Told her what? told about his past? arm? brother? He vaguely remembered spilling a large part of his story to someone else... someone short, raven-haired, clad in white... but it hadn't been the _whole_ story.  
  
Some distant synapses fired then, and two pieces of random information clicked together in his head.  
  
Doctor. _Your_ ship.  
  
[fighting puppets and blood and rains of bullets and wolfwood hated feared outsider ship jessica was right it wasn't my fault it wasn't my fault it wasn't my fault it wasn't but he died in my arms and i couldn't do any anything and she was only string and metal]  
  
His eyes squeezed shut tight, one hand weakly curling up as if to make a fist. The nausea roiled through him once again. _Why go there? Why go there now? The Doc could help me, but no one can help_ him.  
_  
Him._  
  
Four people in the Jeep. Tall woman in the back, caring for him, feeling his forehead, giving away precious water and time and care. Another woman driving, worried, anxious, tense, sometimes swerving because of shaking hands. And in the front seat...  
  
Mr. Vash, please try to move. Strong arms around his back and waist, lifting. Not too fast -- there you go. Before he knew it, he was sitting up. He thought he might have blacked out momentarily.  
  
The tall woman sat behind the driver's seat, leaning across the backseat to give much-needed support to the sick man. He stared through slitted, blurry eyes at the pale blond head peeking over the top of the seat in front of him. It wasn't moving. No -- that wasn't true. It was moving with the motion of the car, bouncing whenever the driver hit a bump, lolling from side to side when she made a sharp turn.  
  
Limp. Broken. Unconscious.  
  
  
  
  
  
The crashed ship loomed up ahead of them.  
  
Shouldn't we try to wake up Mr. Vash's br--  
_  
_  
  
The shadow of the ship fell across the Jeep, blessedly cool and dim.  
  
He can't walk, though. I can't carry both of them.  
  
I'll... I'll do it. The driver sounded mildly fearful -- and a little repulsed. I'll do it, she repeated, louder, as if to confirm it to herself.  
  
You can't lift him, sempai, said the other gently. You take Mr. Vash. I think he's awake enough to take some of his own weight.  
  
The driver made a little sound of consent, but it wasn't sharp or brief enough to hide the infinite relief in her voice.  
  
And then everything became a blur, a staggered stop-motion movie, merely a game that he was watching from the sidelines. He watched himself being lifted out of the Jeep, slumped, drooping, barely able to stand. Some small part of him -- instinct, nothing more -- tried to keep his body upright and walking. It didn't do much good, but it was enough to keep the struggling driver from collapsing under him. The other, the tall woman, had gone out of his field of view, but he couldn't turn his head to find her. So he stared ahead, partly watching his surroundings through his own eyes, partly watching the horizon and himself from somewhere outside his body. He felt disconnected, as severed from himself as his own arm. He did not tell his muscles to move, yet they did. He did not tell himself to be afraid, yet he was.  
  
A twisted, crumpled door was the last thing he saw before he lost himself to darkness again.  
  
---------  
  
Dim. Cool. Quiet. Still. There was something soft beneath him, and he was able to lie straight, without bending his legs. A cool, damp something covered his forehead and eyes.  
  
There were murmuring voices in the darkness. He realized that that was what had woken him.  
  
... mainly due to the heat exhaustion, but when the Doc checked him over, he found that two of his gunshot wounds had become infected as well. You did the best thing, keeping him hydrated. There wasn't much else that could have been done without any disinfectant on hand.  
  
He will be all right, won't he?  
  
Of course. He's survived worse. You should have seen the state of his left arm when he came back to us after the July incident. He hadn't treated it at all -- it was shredded and infected like you wouldn't believe. It took a whole damn lot of work to get him pieced back together enough to attach a synthetic replacement. Guy's pain tolerance must be through the roof.  
  
I don't know. I don't think so. He's never liked pain.  
  
He wouldn't. No one does. I just mean he takes it better than most.  
  
I know. He... The voice trailed off, and there was a very pregnant pause. It returned after a moment, abruptly changing the subject. Thank you so much for taking us in. It was pure chance that we saw the ship on the horizon -- we were trying to get to Terma.  
  
Well, we've always taken Vash-kun in. He's one of us. But... look, ma'am, I don't want to be rude or anything, it's not my way, but... no one here likes outsiders. Last time any outsider came around with Vash-san, two of our Plants were killed and our city crashed. Leaves a little bit of a mark, you know? A lot of people don't trust Vash anymore, and almost no one trusts outsiders. Just a few, just the people who follow the Doc, like me. And... there's the matter of the... other one... The voice hesitated. Honestly, even _I_ can't trust Vash completely, not after he goes and crashes our city and then has the gall to bring _him_ here... Well, a lot of the old-timers here know Vash-san's whole story, and they know who that other one is. You haven't got many allies here, Miss. I'll help Vash, but I won't go near the other. No one will. The sooner Vash heals, the better.  
  
I understand, came the second voice, quietly, resolutely. I'll tell Milly not to go out too much. Thank you for everything.  
  
Don't thank me too soon, ma'am, said the other voice, a little apologetic. I can't guarantee anything. I'll talk to Natalie as soon as I can.  
  
Thank you, the second voice repeated.  
  
Shuffling footsteps and the hiss of an automatic sliding door. A pause, then, and a little patch of blurred light from the bright hallway fluttering against his covered eyes.  
  
I -- I'm sorry if I worried you, ma'am. I don't mean to say that we here are violent people. I just mean that some things are kind of...  
  
Unforgivable. I know. Thank you. The voice was less receptive now, a little more cold.  
  
Yes, ma'am, came the wretched, mumbled reply.  
  
The door hissed shut.  
  
There was a heavy sigh from somewhere near the door, and then light footsteps coming in his direction. His foggy mind had worked out that he was in a bed, similar to a hospital bed, like the beds that had been on his ship at home.  
  
Again, he thought in terms of possession. _My_ ship... _my_ home...  
_  
Have I ever had a home? I don't think so. I don't remember._  
  
The cool, soft thing was removed from his forehead, making him snap back to reality. He tried to protest, but the only thing that came out was a pitiful little cross between a moan and a grunt. Even that little bit of vibration in his vocal cords made liquid fire run down his throat and into his lungs.  
  
Whoever had been talking to the intruder was leaning over him now. A pale face swam into view -- small, finely boned, framed with unkempt black hair... Vash, are you awake? He dragged his eyes open a minute fraction further, and she took that as an affirmative. A small hand settled on his forehead, dispelling all of the lovely coolness that had been lingering there. He grimaced at the burning touch. You're still clammy, the woman standing by him sighed, sounding vaguely disappointed, brushing hair out of his face. She refolded the damp washcloth -- the soft thing that had been on his head, he noticed lethargically -- so that a fresh side was on the outside. Gently, she draped it across his head again, instantly easing a large portion of his discomfort.  
  
Can you speak? asked the woman, leaning closer to him now.  
  
He pondered this question. He worked his vocal cords again -- the fire wasn't as bad this time, but it still burned like hell, and he wasn't going to be making any speeches anytime soon. The leftover acidity of bile was sharp at the back of his throat, making his weak attempt at speech scratchy and hoarse.  
  
he finally managed, blinking slowly, acutely feeling the weight of his eyelids as they moved.   
  
Oh -- oh! I'll go get some, of course, said the woman, looking a little flustered. I meant to earlier -- forgot -- I'll be right back!  
  
And then she was gone. He stared at the ceiling. At least he thought it was the ceiling. It was curved, and dark gray. There was a reddish-brown splotch that looked like rust directly above his head. His mind was getting foggy again, but... but he was fairly certain... that it wasn't rust.  
  
Without warning, his throat became a lot drier.  
  
He was losing his mind again, wandering off and leaving it drifting behind him. He felt like he ought to be going somewhere, but he didn't know where or why or how to get there, he just knew he ought to get on his way or he wouldn't get there before time ran out. But it was like walking into a room only to forget why you needed to be there -- he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do. A hint of thought flashed through his brain -- [name i need a name what's my name i don't remember it and that can't be right]  
_  
I don't deserve a name._  
  
That confused him. Why had he thought that so clearly? Why did the part of him that couldn't remember anything hunger for memories while the part that _did_ remember everything rejected memory itself?  
  
Bewilderment went on a rapid downhill slide to weariness, and his eyes drooped. Part of him wanted to stay awake for a little while, at least for long enough to get a drink of water and try to speak. But that part was the minority, and so, without much of a fight, he let himself sink backwards, submerging himself under the black tide of sleep.  
  
Just before he went under, a random thought flitted through his head... and Vash remembered.  
--------  
  
Post-Chapter Ramblings: FUN WITH PRONOUNS! Seriously. I made a conscious attempt to not name a single character in the narrative (dialogue doesn't count). The only time I used Vash's name was in the last sentence. And that is my artsy-ness for this one chappie. takes a bow, ducks possible incoming vegetables


	2. Lullaby

The Amazing Universal Disclaimer: Don't own it. Won't own it. Can't own it. The end.  
  
Author's Note: As promised, it's an even-numbered chapter -- which means it's not in synch with chapter 1. I like writing Milly and Meryl, almost as much as I like writing the twins. The only Trigun character I have an absolutely murderous time with is Wolfwood. I don't know why. ::shrug:: And Wolfwood will be making some appearances later, but it will only be in flashbacks and/or hallucinations. I'm not sure yet.  
  
--------  
Chapter Two: Lullaby  
--------  
  
The one thing that would stick with Meryl forever about that night was the sound of humming.  
It was late -- way too late to still be up and about, but Meryl couldn't help it. She felt like Milly, pulling an all-nighter with her monthly letters home. Except that Meryl wasn't writing to her family, she was writing to Bernardelli -- and to herself.  
  
Really, she didn't have anything to say in her reports anymore. The first couple of times, she tried to write a full report of everything that had happened, everything in Vash's history that would lead to his being such a nuisance to the insurance companies of the world. She'd given up on that idea, though. Who would believe her if she told the truth? Sure, everyone on Gunsmoke knew, logically, that they came from a different world. But that knowledge was starting to pass into legend, into myth -- some grandparents still understood the phenomenon that was life, still remembered the planet just after the Fall; but they were few and far between, and they were dying out fast. The new generation, Meryl and Milly included, was more removed from those pioneer roots. The only link that could bridge the generational gap was Vash, and he was... well. There just wasn't much that could be said about him that could do him justice.  
  
Meryl sighed, leaning back in her creaking desk chair and looking at the cheap clock on the wall above her. 2:10 a.m. She winced. She didn't really feel _sleepy_... tired, maybe, but that was a generic weariness of the soul, nothing more.  
  
Sighing, she stood and stretched. Eleven reports typed, eleven rejected. She'd never been at this much of a loss for words before. Except right after the incident with that Gale character -- but no, even then she'd had inspiration, just no clear way to channel it. Ever since _he'd_ walked away for the last time, she'd felt like she was wrung dry...  
  
Abruptly, she raised both hands to her drawn face and rubbed at the corners of her eyes, drawing her fingers back through her dark, uneven locks. No time to think about _him._ He was gone now. It had been two weeks. He wasn't coming back.  
  
The thought used to elicit unwanted emotion from her -- when she thought about the tilted sea-green eyes that would never look up to meet hers again, her throat would tighten, her chest constrict. Only a week before, she might have fought tears at the bitter memory of their silent parting in front of this very house. But now... now it was almost worse, the way she could think all she wanted of him and feel nothing at all. She could sit and rifle through her memories like drawers in a filing cabinet; everything organized, simple, cold. It was exactly the same way she looked through her old reports at the main office.  
  
Meryl shot her typewriter a disgusted look. It sat there on that desk that wasn't hers, the keys grinning at her like the teeth of a squat little reptile. The metal panels marred by patches of fixative and duct tape looked almost like scales in the moonlight. A half-finished report drooped over backwards, limp, the machine's dead prey.  
  
Was this what she was subjecting her memories to? Consigning them to this monster? Death by typewriter. Death by cold logic.  
  
Meryl turned away from the desk, sickened with herself and Bernardelli and the world in general. The inside of the building seemed stuffy all of a sudden. The air was full of the ghosts of her typewriter's victims...  
  
Careful not to turn on any lights or close any doors too loudly, Meryl crept out of her room and down the hall. Milly slept in the bedroom on the other side, and seeing as she'd been working constant overtime at her temporary consruction job to support both women, Meryl didn't want to deprive her of what little sleep she could get. Meryl felt guilty about not helping out financially, but the townspeople had been really touchy about the insurance girls' presence after they'd discovered Vash's identity, and Meryl couldn't get a part-time job anywhere. Milly was allowed to stay on at the construction site because -- well, because she was Milly. Everyone knew her, even though she'd only been there for less than a month, and she got along with even the most stubborn and obnoxious people as if they were her best friends. She was a small-town girl, and this was her territory. Meryl needed a city to thrive, needed famous anonymity and a series of desks to hide behind; Milly only needed her work-calloused hands, her cheerful demeanor, and a special cuff link to neatly pin her heart out on her sleeve.  
  
Meryl sighed, passing Milly's closed door. The younger woman was no less the cheerful, childish co-worker she used to be, but somewhere, somehow, she'd lost something too deep to ignore. Over a month since the rogue priest's death, and neither of them had really come to accept it yet. It hurt to watch Milly's antics... knowing what she'd suffered, who she'd lost.  
  
The same way it had hurt to watch Vash.  
  
The front door was just in front of her now; she needed air, badly. A tendril of chilly night air drifted in between the cracks in the aged wooden door, and she shivered. For some reason, her fingers tingled when she touched the doorknob. Something didn't feel quite right... some lingering sixth sense at the back of her mind was trying to tell her something.  
  
She automatically put it down to static electricity and paranoia, and turned the knob.  
  
The thing that stuck with her the sharpest about that night was the sound of humming.  
  
The soft sound was the first thing to reach her ears; soft and broken, and completely unfamiliar. Stepping out onto the small deck of the rented house, Meryl wrapped her arms around herself to battle the dry cold of the desert night, frowning. The sound of the door clicking shut behind her was abnormally loud, maybe because it was counterpointed against the discordant notes of some alien song drifting through the air. She let her hand fall from the closed door, peering out into the street to try to find where the sound was coming from. The rented house fronted a wide area, almost a plaza; the moonlight, shunted away from all the town's narrow alleys, reached the ground here easily. Sand drifts like molten silver puffed across the bare stone of the demi-plaza, nudged onwards by the slight breeze.  
  
Across the plaza -- there, in the patch of dim shadow by the town gates. Meryl adjusted her vision, tried to will more light to the deformed blur of darker shade within the pale shadow. Someone was definitely there -- and they were singing, or at least trying to.  
  
Meryl pulled the tender inside of her cheek between thoughtful teeth, biting down as if this were a dream she could will herself to wake up from at any moment. No such luck. To say she fought a bitter inner struggle over whether or not to approach the hulking shadow would be a lie; in fact, she couldn't help but laugh mirthlessly at herself at just how resigned she felt as she stepped off the low porch and started moving across the open space.  
  
It was a picturebook meeting of strangers. Her -- the angel clad in white -- gliding forth into the silvered night to bring her grace and mercy to a gruesome, lost, twisted soul in the shadow. That wasn't as comforting a thought as she wished it could be.  
  
Each step drew her closer to the twisted shape, sharpening lines and highlights until she could distinctly see two figures. One was sitting cross-legged, slumped over the other, whose head was cradled in the lap of the first. The second figure looked to be completely prone and unresponsive, either unconscious or... dead.  
  
The strange song suddenly took on a sharp note of grief and bitterness to Meryl's ears. As soon as she thought of death, she thought she could sense it, the phantom smell of blood and gunpower tickling at the back of her throat. The humming figure might as well have been singing a dirge.  
  
Recognition came gradually... or maybe she had known all along who the two darkened figures were. She couldn't tell; somehow it didn't seem to matter anymore. From the moment he'd gone -- before then, even -- life had felt like a dream she couldn't wake up from. Each day she felt more disconnected from herself; each day she found that she had been unconsciously molding herself to her new life with Vash, and that when that left abruptly vanished, she had nowhere to go. She wasn't sure what had changed her. Vash, certainly. Milly, even -- a little. The big girl had surprised and surpassed Meryl in more ways than one over the past few years. But it wasn't just a person or a set of circumstances; it was the sharp smell of smoke at dawn, it was the way sand slid and squeaked underneath her boots, it was the familiar weight of her gun-laden cloak and the feel of a trigger or a leather strap or a steering wheel under her searching fingers.  
  
What had changed her? Children's laughter. Drunken bar brawls. A steamer foreman's stout devotion to his job and his honor. Spending five minutes watching a Plant technician at work, and finally understanding to a full extent what -- who -- it really was inside that seemingly dead bulb. Intervening in a lynching... and succeeding.  
  
What had changed her?  
  
Life. The world. The human race. Things she couldn't understand when she was sitting behind her neat and orderly desk in an office building, being pressed to death by her own paperwork.  
  
The thought of returning to Bernardelli as if nothing had happened was sickening. Meryl didn't want to go questing for adventure or anything -- exactly the opposite, really -- but she no longer questioned herself when she followed her gut rather than her mind. She didn't question the fact that she needed to see the figure in the shadow across the street, even if seeing him -- them -- would only serve to confirm what she already knew.  
  
She drew closer now. Silver twilight blurred everything at the edges; she couldn't see their faces or hands, or even fully make out what they were wearing. But their figures were enough to give them away, slender, broad-shouldered, regal... lost royalty to go with the planet's lost technology. How fitting.  
  
Vash's hair had lost its spike, falling around his face and clinging to his neck in a tangled, straw-like way. The sweat had dried in it, stiffer than any gel. She wondered how long he'd walked to get here. He leaned over his brother's sleeping face, swaying back and forth in a tiny arc, no more than the wind could have pushed him... the matted frame of his hair hid his face from view, but from the way his shoulders rose and fell, she knew he was the one singing.  
  
It didn't sound like Vash's voice. Meryl had heard the full gamut of his expressions, knew his laughter and his tears in equal measure; she knew the rasp that betrayed his inner pain when he cracked an awkward joke; she knew the hidden measure of concern that honeyed his tongue when he flirted; she knew the repressed scream behind his quiet anger and the mourning wail that threatened to overtake him when he was in a blind rage. His drunken ramblings, his tearful apologies... his silent goodbyes. She'd even heard him sing before.  
  
But nothing... nothing compared to this.  
  
If there were words, she either couldn't understand them or didn't bother to make them out. There was a melody, but it was elusive... as soon as it stopped, she knew she would forget it, like a lucid dream at the edge of waking. His voice was neither bass nor tenor, just... soft, sad... like simple speech, and yet unlike. It was haunting, it was beautiful... it was...  
  
It hurt.  
  
Vash moved with the breeze, and for the first time, Meryl saw the flash and glitter of tears, dripping slowly from the end of Vash's nose onto his brother's pale cheek. Vash's right hand rested in the little cave formed by his brother's neck and ear, curled fingers entwined in the pale locks as if afraid to let go. His mechanical arm lay across Knives' shoulder, hand splayed palm-down against what Meryl could now clearly see was a blood-soaked bandage. His back bent as if under a heavy load, head tilted downwards so he could see nothing but the upside-down countenance of his brother -- if his eyes were even open, which Meryl distantly doubted.  
  
Meryl knelt slowly in the sand, barely two yarz away from the mourning twin and his unconscious burden. She closed her eyes and let the sound of Vash's broken voice pierce her to the bone, acupunture needles of grief. She understood that no matter what happened from now on... nothing could ever quite be the same. Even if Vash succeeded, things would be different... even if he failed, he had already changed too much to ever be the same man she'd met three years ago.  
  
The song welled up inside her like blood from an open wound. She didn't even notice hearing it anymore... it didn't have to pass through her ears to get to her heart.  
  
She drifted then, losing herself for a few brief minutes in the empty nothing that had been trying to claim her for two weeks. No tears touched her cheeks; this feeling in her was not sorrow, not grief. It wasn't a feeling at all. It was gray.  
  
Silence was what finally brought her back to reality, dead silence and the prickling feeling of being watched. She opened her eyes and found herself staring straight into the aqua depths that she had nearly convinced herself she would never see again. Vash and Meryl said nothing to each other -- there were some things that couldn't be spoken aloud simply because no words in any language could bear any meaning deeper than what a look could convey.  
  
Meryl felt acutely aware of everything around her; of the triple shadows cast by the moons, of the small breeze and the way it flattened her shirt against her back and ruffled her hair over her eyes, of the rough sand-coated stone she sat on. She gazed at Vash for nearly two whole minutes, and each second felt like a year. She wanted to move, but not to make the first move; and as far as she could tell, Vash felt the same way.  
  
Finally, after a thirty-second eternity, Vash broke their eye contact, turning to look down at his brother once again. The hand that was by Knives' ear flexed a little, moving up to brush Vash's tears from Knives' face, to draw stray strands back from his too-pale forehead. Meryl shifted, rolling back on her heels to stand.  
  
She didn't remember much of the process of getting Vash and his brother inside the house, although she knew she had done it without waking Milly. Part of her wanted to remember that night more clearly, but more of her knew how wrong it would be to try to understand it. Sacreligious, almost... the same way it had felt wrong to try to understand the words -- if there were any -- in Vash's alien song.  
  
Lyrics couldn't have made a difference, no matter how haunting they might have been. Besides, all that stuck with Meryl about that night...  
  
was the sound of humming.  
  
--------  
  
Post-Chapter Ramblings: The first of many flashback chapters, I fear. I won't give any indication of a flashback (like using all italics), so you'll just have to bear with me and figure out the timeline yourself.  
  
Vash's song... was not intended to be any song in particular, really. I know everyone has some piece of music that affects them the way Vash's melody affected Meryl -- something that just scours you from the inside out, that twists your heart up and leaves you empty inside. Whatever that song is for you, then that's what Vash is singing. Personally, I was listening to Jeff Buckley's when I wrote that scene. I've heard it a million times, and it still gives me chills.  
--------  
  
Review Replies:  
  
Jaina: Hi, thanks for reviewing! The real plot shall be returned to in the next chapter, no worries. I'm really looking forward to writing Knives waking up... eee! ::g:: It'll be fun. Ahh, a fellow AP survivor. Heh. Thanks again!  
  
Yma: Aiee! Wow, thanks for reviewing. I love How Far is Eden... best portrayal of Knives in a fanfic, ever... (Must... not... hero-worship...) --;; Ah, I hope this will get a little more plot-y as it goes along, but I think it will mostly consist of heavy philosophy and incidental violence. And flashbacks. Loooots'a flashbacks.  
  
::glomps Jay and Saerry:: Ni! Danke, danke, thanks for the support! ::G::


	3. The Calculator Effect

Author's Note: WOOT! Finally, I hath returned from the dead! No, seriously. Writer's block hit me about 8 paragraphs from the end of this chapter, and I had to churn out an ending in less than an hour because we're leaving for a three-day (internetless) trip to Chattanooga for my 16th b-day. I'm not as happy with this chapter as I was with chapter 2, but that's understandable -- I mean, I still can't believe I wrote chapter 2. That was quite possibly my best piece of work _ever._ o.O  
  
I have a new Trigun story (Lost and Found) started at my website, too. I won't be posting it on FF.N because of their recent crack-down on mis-labeled stories, and I don't want to chance it. It's high R, may turn NC-17, and it's Vash/Wolfwood yaoi (post-series, so it's also Wolfwood-resurrection). Only the last chapter will contain lemon, so it's mostly safe for the average shounen-ai reader. Please don't flame me. You don't _have_ to read it, you know.  
  
-----------  
Chapter 3: The Calculator Effect  
-----------  
  
Vash woke with a myoclonic jerk, the sudden sensation and fear of falling so intense that he almost cried out. For a split-second, everything was inverted -- flying and falling, reality and hallucination, speech and thought -- he couldn't tell if he was speaking aloud or just shouting at himself, but either way, something inside him snapped. His hands clenched into fists involuntarily, curled in a death grip around folds of the sheet.  
  
And then the sensation passed and he woke up all the way -- only to find himself already sitting up in bed, and, apparently, talking. Or at least, he _had_ been talking. Meryl was sitting cross-legged on the side of his sickbed, leaning forward as if they had been in deep conversation. Vash could remember none of it.  
  
Meryl frowned at him, reaching out to feel his temperature. He flinched away, still unsettled by the rude awakening. she queried, touching both sides of her hand to his forehead. Are you all right? Are you feeling sick again?  
  
he said automatically, not knowing _what_ he was feeling. He floundered, at a loss for an explanation. I... I'm sorry... were we talking? It sounded stupid as soon as it left his lips. He winced.  
  
Her frown deepened. What do you mean, were we talking? Of course we... Vash, what's wrong? She looked more than just a little worried now; from behind her gruff, sharp voice, a little hint of fear slipped through.  
  
Vash looked around him as if the room itself could offer an answer. They were definitely on a ship; the unimaginative crackerbox of a room was standard issue crew's quarters. Two bunks, storage compartments in the walls, a tiny hygiene cubicle, and the door were the only things that stood out from the empty gray backdrop. One wall was curved -- they were on the outer rim of the ship, then, if they had direct access to the hull. Some half-buried part of Vash's mind kicked into high gear, calculating the dimensions of the room, the arrangement of the keys on the door's lock panel, the colored bars striping one corner of the door to the bathroom... and within seconds, he knew which ship they were on, what sector within the ship, the names of the original crew, and the floor layout of the area immediately surrounding them.  
_  
Why am I thinking this?_ Vash interrupted his own train of thought, trying to shut down that alien part of him that was a living calculator. He'd thought he had gotten over the whole higher-IQ-than-should-be-legal thing. He hadn't consciously thought in terms of numbers and blueprints for decades. Why start again now?  
  
He shook his head, even more unsettled than he had been already.  
  
Hey -- Vash, look at me. Meryl was still trying to get his attention. He snapped back to reality only to realize that mere seconds had passed since her last question. His brain seemed to be working faster than his body could keep up with. He wished it would stop; it was already making him tired.  
  
I don't -- he started, then paused. He'd already gotten so off track that he'd forgotten what she'd said. he asked dumbly.  
  
I asked what's wrong, Vash, Meryl said crossly, feeling his forehead again. He almost caught her wrist and stopped her from doing it, but he resisted the urge to. You were just talking about the ship, and then you just stopped and looked away... and now you act like you didn't even know you were talking in the first place.  
  
But I... I just woke up, Vash said helplessly. Didn't I?  
  
You've been awake for nearly an hour, Meryl said disbelievingly.  
  
Vash just stared at her. No, I haven't, he said finally. The contradiction sounded weak even to his own ears.  
  
Meryl shook her head, exasperated I'm getting the doctor, she said, swinging her feet to the floor and standing.  
  
Vash's eyes widened a little and he straightened, calling, But Meryl didn't stop, didn't seem to hear him. It was only after she'd gone that he realized he hadn't said anything aloud at all.  
  
He stared at the closed door for a few minutes, trying to stop his hands from shaking and failing miserably. The calculator effect... the autonomic waking routine while still physically asleep... losing track of what was spoken and what was telepathic. None of these things were unfamiliar to him, but... he hadn't done them in over a century. He pulled his knees up under the covers until he could rest his forehead on them, focusing fiercely on remaining calm.  
  
Finally managing to still his errant limbs, Vash raised his hands to his head and rubbed at his temples. This had to be because of the fight. He remembered it... vaguely. He remembered greeting his brother... remembered drawing his gun and leveling it at a spot just over Knives' shoulder, still unwilling to aim at anything vital. That was how it had begun. He _knew_ that, and yet...  
  
Vash shook his head sharply, causing a low-level ache that had been building up behind his eyes to stab up into new, vibrant life. He winced as the splitting migraine settled in. Maybe he wasn't as healed as he felt.  
  
In all honesty, he'd thought he wouldn't be able to remember the fight at all; it surprised him that he could call up a hazy image of white feathers and light in his memory. He didn't really know what the Angel Arm looked like -- he could never remember using it. He assumed he must have been aware of what was going on when he'd fired it in July and Augusta, but even if he _had_ gotten a good look at it then, it did him no good now. Those memories had vanished as if surgically removed, the only legacy of their passing being two ragged mental scars to match the scars criss-crossing his body.  
  
But this time it was a little bit different, and he didn't know why. He remembered small things -- the scarlet color of the sky, the acrid smell of gunpowder, hot smoke cascading around his head and shoulders, the stinging burn of breathing in a faceful of kicked-up dust. He remembered the echo of laughter, and a sharp scream. The feel of splinters prickling under his gloved hands, unable to break the leather. Little things. A figure with gruesomely deformed arms standing in front of him, insanely tall... or maybe Vash himself had been on the ground, and the other figure had just seemed tall from the wrong vantage point. Things kept slipping away as soon as he caught hold of them...  
  
As soon as he realized that the memories were evading him, he tried to go back to the beginning, but that only made it worse. What color _had_ the sky been? He couldn't remember now... but... he knew he'd had it a moment ago.  
_  
Damn it all,_ he thought bitterly, letting his face fall into his hands again.  
  
A few minutes later, Meryl returned with a kid -- well, he looked like a kid to Vash, at least. He was probably in his late teens, maybe early twenties, a doctor's apprentice or just some hopeful follower of Doc's or Natalie's. He looked vaguely familiar. Everyone always looked vaguely familiar to Vash, though. It was just a byproduct of longevity -- faces ran together, times and ages and days started to lose meaning. It was hard to remain fully aware of the world around himself, sometimes. Time passed no more quickly for Vash than it did for the average human, it just kept on going... indefinitely.  
  
Meryl was talking to the kid when the door opened, but she stopped when she saw Vash watching them. she said tentatively, stepping into the room.  
  
He nodded in acknowledgement, but he wasn't looking at her. The kid was eyeing him in a way he knew all too well. The old-timers here, the ones who had actually gotten to know him a little, had always been the ones who were most comfortable around him. This kid -- he would have never been up close and personal with a legend before. He might have seen Vash from a distance when the city crashed, but... that was really no kind of situation to pass judgment on a person in.  
  
the kid began, sweating under Vash's gaze. Vash-san! Good to see you up and about. Miss Meryl came out earlier to say you'd woken, but I was otherwise occupied... so, ah, can I get you anything?  
_  
Can I get you anything...' You? Get me anything? Anything I want?_ Vash felt hysterical laughter bubbling just below the surface, mirthless and vaguely sick-feeling. Words couldn't describe how very much he hated that question.  
  
It's really nothing, Vash said softly, blanking out everything he really wanted to say and drawing an iron curtain across his face. The kind, calm grin that was programmed into his facial muscles appeared and fixed itself there... although, after more than a century of use, it was getting more than a little worn.  
  
The kid looked nervously between the faintly smiling outlaw and the short insurance agent, who, as it happened, was shooting Vash a death glare.  
  
Meryl said sharply. You know it's not nothing! You're forgetting chunks of time, how normal is that?  
  
The kid blinked. Forgetting what? he repeated, his nerves abating a little when medical curiosity took over.  
  
Vash sighed, finally looking away from the kid. He made a vague gesture with one hand, brushing the matter aside. I'm losing time, that's all. I've done it before. It's nothing to worry about.  
  
The kid took a step towards Vash's bed, curiosity completely piqued now. You say this has happened before? When, and for how long? Can you describe the exact symptoms?  
_  
He's got the makings of a good doctor, all right,_ Vash thought ruefully. He just wished the kid would drop this... it wasn't something he felt like dealing with right now. He just wanted to go back to sleep...  
  
Fine. If the kid wouldn't let a sleeping dog lie, Vash would just have to drop the shell that he knew would put some distance between them. He didn't like abusing his own practically-mythological status like this... but he liked being interrogated even less. Yeah, it used to happen a lot back on the SEEDS ship, he said truthfully, knowing that somewhere out of his field of view, the kid was stiffening up again with apprehension at Vash's tone. Knives did it, too. When we were kids. It was like sleepwalking. I haven't done it in a few decades, but it's not a big deal.  
  
That did the trick. The kid was dumbstruck, silently struggling with the casual way the legendary outlaw could talk about his true age and his psychopathic brother. It was just as Vash had suspected -- the kid had idolized him already, had done exactly what everyone on the planet did at one point or other. Nobody wanted anything more from Vash than a monopoly on his name and a taste of his blood.  
  
Nobody wanted the real man. Nobody wanted the truth.  
  
Vash closed his eyes, wrapped his arms around his knees, and bowed his head. He just couldn't do it... he couldn't drive the kid away. The need for someone, anyone, who could understand him -- the desperate need to stop the alienation before it could take root was far too strong. Call it weakness. Call it sentimentalism. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore.  
  
Stop looking at me like that, he murmured. He wasn't sure if he was talking to Meryl or the kid, or...  
  
Meryl came up to his side and raised a hand as if to touch his forehead. This time, he really did grab her wrist and lower her hand by force. She winced a little, but said nothing.  
  
Ahh... Vash-san? the kid asked weakly. He raised a trembling hand to the bridge of his nose, rubbing fiercely at the side of it.  
  
Vash almost laughed out loud at the sight, looking up again with a twinkle in his eye that had been gone for much too long. You've got contacts, right? Vash asked cheerfully, smiling away. Both Meryl and the doctor kid stared at him. He imitated the kid's nose-rubbing nervous habit. Only people with glasses do that much, he explained. I know. The nosepieces on my shades used to pinch like the devil until I got them fixed. Hey, do I remember you mentioning talking to Natalie-sensei? I didn't know she was still around these parts. Don't guess I could convince her to make an appearance on such short notice...  
  
Ah! V-Vash-san, of course! I'll go get Natalie-san right away! The kid did one of the most spectacular double takes Vash had ever seen and nearly cracked his nose on the doorframe on the way out.  
  
Vash chuckled a little to himself, and looked up to find Meryl glaring down at him, arms crossed dangerously. He gave her a hopeful, conciliatory grin.  
  
She was having none of it.  
  
How could you play the poor boy like that? He was only trying to help! You nearly gave him a heart attack! Don't you realize you can't just go around blabbing about your brother like he's a tame pet project of yours? No one here believes your story, no one believes they're safe while _he's_ here! And what the hell do you _mean,_ sleepwalking is _no big deal?_ Vash, you _idiot!_ You -- you -- _gyah!_  
  
Vash tuned her out, wincing at all the right places and throwing out a few empty objections whenever her ire needed re-stoking. Maybe the damage wasn't completely healed over yet, but at least he'd managed to salvage that conversation before it turned into an uncomfortable silence. If anything could hurt Vash, it was an uncomfortable silence. Silences like that gave other people time to think about what he was rather than who he was, and it was only then that they molded him into a false idol or a moon-scarring legend.  
  
Where's Milly? Vash asked into the midst of Meryl's tirade, too tired to think anymore.  
  
Meryl faltered and stopped in mid-sentence, fist still raised. I -- She spluttered for a second. I -- she's -- over in the other room. Hey! Don't you dare change the subject on me! She gave him a death glare, her cheeks flushed pink with adrenaline and anger.  
  
Vash gave her a little smile, knowing and level. I only wanted to know.  
  
Meryl lowered her hand and pulled her lower lip between her teeth. Her eyelid was still twitching spasmodically, but her fury seemed to have passed for the moment. Milly's... busy, Meryl said carefully, not meeting Vash's eyes. She's taking care of herself just for now.  
  
Vash nodded and decided not to push the subject any more. Obviously something was up, but he didn't think he could deal with it now. He would wait for the kid to come back, talk to Natalie... and deal with everything else in the morning.  
  
The door slid open just then, admitting a red-faced, huffing doctor-kid. I -- I got her, Vash-san, he gasped, stepping out of the doorway and doubling over with his hands on his knees, trying to get his breath back.  
  
Vash smiled up at the person who had been standing just behind the kid in the doorway. Hey, sensei! he said as cheerfully as he could manage. How are you these days? He didn't have to run, you know -- I mean, it's not an emergency or anything.  
  
Oh, I know, Vash_-sama,_ said the figure sardonically, stepping into the room and waving the door shut behind her.  
  
Vash winced. Awwww, sensei, don't call me that! he objected. You know I don't like my reputation...  
  
Ah, I know, I know. Natalie waved her hands in apology, then seemed to notice Meryl for the first time. Oh, you must be Miss Meryl! I've heard of you from your partner. Vash getting on your nerves at all?  
  
Oh -- I, uhm... Meryl stammered, taken aback. Well, yes. I mean, it's a pleasure to finally meet you, ma'am! Milly told me about you last night. She recovered herself and held out a hand, eyeing Natalie up and down.  
  
She was an older woman of average height and a stocky build, although she acted like she was much older than she looked. Her hair was iron-gray and frazzled, stuck up in a messy, lopsided bun with one chopstick and a broken pencil stub. Her clothes were similar to those of everyone else on the ship -- an antiquated fashion statement, half-uniform and half-casual. Natalie had made her clothes her own, though, unlike the neatly-pressed outfits Meryl had seen on most of the people here. She wore a gray-and-orange men's uniform, with the tunic sleeves cut off and hemmed in by hand in a clashing color of thread, and a Project SEEDS wing-symbol roughly embroidered on the breast pocket. Her pants were too long, dust-stained all the way to the knee, and shredded at the heel where she'd trodden on them.  
  
But what struck Meryl wasn't her apparent sloppiness or uncouth bluntness. It was the fact that as soon as she walked into a room, she _owned_ it. If ever there was a queen on this godforsaken planet, then that monarch surely wore hand-modified tunics and torn pants, because Meryl was positive that she was shaking hands with royalty.  
  
Did Vash just call you Meryl asked before she could stop herself, momentarily forgetting that she was still holding Natalie's hand.  
  
Natalie smiled lightly and gently disengaged Meryl from the handshake. Hai, hai. Yes, Vash likes to think he learned something from me. He didn't, really -- I could have talked to him all day long and it would've been like arguing with a brick wall.  
  
That's not true, sensei! Vash complained, putting on a look of feigned devastation.  
  
Give it a rest, boy, Natalie said, pulling up the room's only chair and sitting backwards on it, leaning her broad forearms on the backrest. She looked over her shoulder at the door. Hey, don't be a useless lump, kiddo! Come over here, have a seat.  
  
The doctor-kid gulped nervously, taking a hesitant step away from the wall, towards Natalie, Vash and Meryl. Well, I d-don't really think it's exactly my place to -- he began, looking perfectly solemn and sincere.  
  
Can it, Jones, Natalie cut in amiably, motioning towards the empty bed opposite Vash's. Count yourself the Doc's representative, if you want. It's not like you're going to learn any life-endangering state secrets that I'll have to kill you for later.  
  
hesitated, but eventually managed to loosen up a little and sit on the foot of the bed. Meryl resumed her place at Vash's side, still looking at Natalie in a mixture of respect and bewilderment.  
  
Natalie shifted, resettling herself on her chair. She nodded between Vash and Jones, saying, I suppose you two would have never met. Vash, this here's Michael Jones, one of the Doc's med students. Not one of the new kids, either. Doc's getting on up there now, needed someone to take over for a while. Jones is the only one he felt qualified. So don't traumatize him, will ya? And Jones, meet Vash the Stampede. I know you don't need to hear any more about him. Am I right? She laughed, a firm, unarguable sound that came from somewhere deep in her chest.  
  
I -- y-yes, I met Vash-san earlier, Michael said, flustered. Natalie had somehow managed to give him a compliment and a put-down in the same breath.  
  
Vash cut in imploringly, leaning his chin on his knees again and looking across the space between them to catch her sharp grey eyes.  
  
Natalie shook her head, reluctanctly letting go of her pretense of joviality. Vash, I'm serious. Stop calling me that. He nodded, and she sighed in response, scratching just behind her ear.  
  
Vash prompted.  
  
So. You're awake. You asked for me. What the hell are you so'-ing me for?  
  
Vash recognized the tension in his old friend's stance, the way she kept finding reasons to touch the same spot behind her ear without even noticing her own movements. He hadn't seen her mood swing so far so fast since the loss of July. Laughter to snapping in under a minute -- it had to be a record.  
  
I just thought someone should know how I'm doing, Vash said softly, looking away. So you can tell Doc. He's probably worried.  
  
Natalie shook her head again. He's not so good right now, Vash, she said gently. Doc caught a bug that was going around -- something from the outside, something we'd never seen before. No one here had any natural immunities like your outsider friends do. Meaning no offense, ma'am, she added, glancing at the other woman in the room.  
  
None taken, Meryl murmured. This didn't feel like a conversation she was particularly welcome to take part in.  
  
How's he doing? Vash asked, his voice a little strained. Doc's too tough for some cold to stop him from coming to see me.  
  
Natalie said nothing for a moment, pursing her lips a little. He's not got that long to go, Vash, she said eventually. You knew he was old to begin with. Vash winced at that. Tough a cookie as he is, even he can't take an alien disease on top of a sudden lifestyle and climate change. You know?  
  
Vash nodded slowly, squeezing his knees together tightly as if that might force him to wake up. I understand, he said quietly.  
  
He _would_ like to see you again, Vash, Natalie said gently, leaning forward against the backrest of the chair. Even if it's only once. Taking care of you was his life.  
  
Vash closed his eyes and nodded again. I'll go when I can, he muttered against the muffling sheet. I don't... not yet. No one just yet.  
  
Okay, Vash, it's okay, Natalie said calmingly, reaching one broad arm over and taking Vash's shoulder in a firm grip. Listen, I didn't come here to put more weight on you. You wanted to talk, so you do the talking. How's that?  
  
Vash took a couple of steadying breaths. When he raised his head and opened his eyes, Meryl was slightly surprised how clear they were -- considering how he used to bawl like a baby at the drop of a pin, she was more than a little shocked that such harsh news hadn't caused more damage.  
  
Or maybe it had... and Meryl just couldn't see.  
  
I... I wanted to get a second opinion on something, Vash said, only faltering a tiny bit before recovering his composure. His expression was a little more vacant than it had been, but otherwise he showed no outer signs of grief. I've been behaving like I used to when I was five for the past day, maybe longer. I've been losing time and forgetting how to speak... I haven't done _that_ much since I was a toddler. I think it's just a side effect of the Arm, but I'm not so sure all the time... I feel like... it feels like there's too much of me in my head... He trailed off, sighed heavily. I'm just tired, he amended quietly. I'm too damn tired all the time.  
  
Natalie pursed her lips again, settling her chin on her forearms in thought. Could be a side effect, she said finally, although she didn't sound convinced of it. Could be somefin' else. You said you haven't lost time and all since you were a little kid... but just before, you said you were acting five. What's the equivalent of your five in human years, hm? About, what, twelve or thirteen?  
  
Vash shrugged uncomfortably. Yeah, something like that.  
  
Infancy and puberty, then, Natalie muttered, nodding hesitantly. She sat up straight and tapped two fingers against her skull. Your hormones've done gone all wonky on you for some reason, Vash. That's why you're so tired. Brain's working constant overtime. Have you been spacing out, multitasking without meaning to?  
  
Vash nodded mutely.  
  
Well, that's it, Natalie confirmed. The Arm never had any side effects like that before, did it? Vash grunted a negative. Well, then. I've only got one other idea, and you aren't gonna like it.  
  
Vash looked up sharply.  
  
You were still with your brother when you were that young, Natalie said bluntly.  
  
Vash stared at her for a second, unfocused, thinking at lightening speed. It could be true, but -- he'd put up so many barriers, so long ago -- if Knives could have influenced him like this before, why didn't he? No, no. It couldn't be. Knives would have known, would have exploited a connection like this a long time ago. Vash's barriers had held for decades -- he couldn't... not now...  
  
A little voice in the back of his head leered at him, scared.  
_  
Breakingbreakingbroken... something's fallen inside... something's still wrong with me-him-us._  
  
Tentatively, forgetting to breathe for a moment, Vash nudged at the walls in his head, felt them crumble, felt the gaps, felt the seeping alien filth and perfume of someone else's thoughts and feelings creeping in, like a factory polluting groundwater.  
  
Fear clenched in the pit of Vash's stomach. He didn't want to know Knives this closely again -- not until his brother was healed in body and mind, not until all the old wounds were stitched shut. If Knives could get inside now, he might lose his only chance.  
  
Vash didn't realize people were speaking to him. He lost focus on his surroundings, cradling his head in his hands and curling into a ball, trying to block the seepage -- throwing up new barriers only to have them washed away, like trying to build a dam with mud. And every time he touched those stranger-feelings, those mixed emotions that weren't his own, he only saw a burning image of his brother's peaceful face, sleeping and staring at clouds and holding him when he cried and everything that he missed that he loved that he wanted to feel again  
_  
I just want to be able to feel again --_  
  
Vash didn't realize he was crying. Natalie and Meryl were at his side, the older woman holding him while the shorter patted his back awkwardly. Everything felt so strange... this wasn't how it was supposed to work out. Why was he getting such a mixed message from his brother's mental presence? It was almost like -- like nothing had ever happened -- like there had never been a single moment of hate between them.  
  
There were footsteps in the hall outside, and a loud knock at the door. Vash barely noticed when Natalie let go of him to point Michael towards the door. The doctor, who had been lookng extremely nervous about this whole turn of events, was grateful to have something to do -- palming the door panel, he started to tell the person outside that this wasn't a good time, and to please wait a moment...  
  
The person outside was having none of it. A familiar voice drew Vash back towards reality, making him raise his head an inch or two from where it rested on his knees.  
  
Sempai! Sempai, something's happened --  
  
_Milly?_ Hey, you know you're not supposed to be in here --  
  
I had to come, Sempai! You told me to tell you when --  
  
What about --? Did you leave him _alone?_ Milly --  
  
Sempai... he's woken up.  
------------  
  
Post-Chapter Ramblings: Little bit of a cliffie there, hope no one's too traumatized. ::rolls eyes:: Chapter 4 will _not,_ as I have said before, continue from this ending -- it will be something else entirely. And it won't be a flashback! Shock gasp horror. .  
  
--------  
Review Replies:  
  
Yma: Hi hi! Wow.... ::is momentarily starstruck; head swells:: Eeep, must stop doing that! Hehehe. . I'm so glad you're enjoying this -- I'm proud of this story and the way it seems to be turning out as one of my best. I'll have to keep this reply short unfortunately, seeing as I'm on a time limit (15 more minutes until Dad cuts off my internet connection... ::sweatdrop::), but I just wanted to say how grateful I am to have such a thoughtful reviewer. One thing that drives me up a wall almost as much as flames is straight, unmitigated praise -- I like having a little more thorough idea of _what_ it is my readers like about my work, not just that they like it. Anyway, tangent aside. . Thank you so much for the lovely review. I hope I can continue to live up to expectations!  
  
Jaina: Danke! Yes, is more of a Wolfwood-ish song, but there's just something about it that seems to fit the feel of Trigun as a whole to me. I'm glad you liked my characterization of Meryl. . I'm hoping to gradually make her less and less stuffy and more open and adventurous as this story goes on. I probably won't do many -- if any -- more Meryl-centered chapters, though.  
  
Jay: Danke danke! ::glomps::  
  
Nefertari Bakura: Aiee! Yay! Wow, Knives-sama loves me? ::sniff:: I feel so special... . I'm glad you like it! I will do just that -- and I don't plan on ever stopping writing. It's too much a part of me to quit. .  
  
Archeeka: ::big stupid grin:: Wow... thanks! ::blushes and twiddles thumbs:: I swear, my head feels so swelled now... 


	4. Lifeblood

Author's Note: My sincerest apologies for my lateness. The predictable excuses apply -- work, school, other projects, life. You know the drill. Still, I know that doesn't make it any better. But I swear I haven't abandoned this story, and I never will. I am in love with these ideas floating around in my head -- and that means that I'll go to any lengths necessary to get them down on paper.  
  
I like this chapter. It's not for all tastes, but I liked it when I wrote it and I think it works just as well as a stand-alone story as part of this total fanfic. Don't expect any of your favorite characters, but I beg that you at least give my experiments a fair chance. .  
  
Thanks again to all the readers for their support. I've finished chapter 5, which I'm withholding for a week or two to allow myself some time to build up a story surplus with chapters 6 and 7. Maybe I can keep ahead of my own posting schedule from now on.  
  
Enjoy!  
  
---------  
Chapter 4 - Lifeblood  
---------  
  
There had always been desert on Gunsmoke. Names came and went; people, species, life and death came and went unnoticed, scarring the land a little and then vanishing, swept over with dusty scar tissue. But the desert was eternal -- the desert was its own living being, its own god and devil, its own heaven and hell.  
  
It hadn't always been hot, clean desert; there hadn't always been sand and rock as far as the eye could see. First there was the desert of creation, gross molten scarification, the very surface of the semi-spherical lump boiling with its own new life. Each gout of steam was the gasping breath of an infant world, insignificantly tiny in the void of the universe and yet so determined... so infallible, so resolute with newness that no meteor shower could crack it, no flesh wound could stop the life that it was bound to foster.  
  
The red cracks in the earth sealed up, and the blackness of new skin covered the surface of the planet. The infant's first toddling steps drew it inexorably towards the eighth moon, for in that beginning-time there had been nine other droplets of blue-white rock flung out of the Great Sun's core along with what was eventually to become the planet Gunsmoke. Of the nine smaller flecks, one had been nearly the same size as the infant planet; this had been the eighth moon, almost a planet in itself, smaller than Gunsmoke but twice as dense and with a heavy, barbituric gravity that drew its siblings into a death dance -- each orbit faltered, drawn to the eighth moon, setting each moon and the infant planet onto a collision course.  
  
The ninth moon, lightest and weakest of the nine, met its older sibling's embrace first. It shattered against the surface, crushed by gravity nearly seven times heavier than its own. But the eighth moon took injury from its younger sibling's death -- a fissure split it nearly all the way through, a gaping red mouth that bared its still-cooling innards to the void. And in that weakened state, the first moon, eldest of the ten children of the Great Sun, brought a final end to the eighth moon's despair -- and in so doing also destroyed itself.  
  
Of the ten, six moons remained, along with Gunsmoke herself; one by one, the small moons were drawn into the planet's light gravity, circling her as children would a campfire, keeping their backs to her to protect her from the encroaching dark. The planet drifted, settling on an orbit close to the scattered graves of her three smaller moon-siblings.  
  
The planet's sphere of gravity collected grave dust from her destroyed siblings, building up an insulating layer thick enough to hold in gaseous elements -- nitrogen at first, and phosphorous, and sulfur. The poisonous combinations deadened the surface, and in time the planet shook, so that old scars reopened and white-hot blood spilled out and steam rose curling into the air -- for now there truly was air, of a sort. And the desert turned to a broken, crumbling, roiling mass of new crust fighting old upheaval, a desert strewn with dunes of magma and clouds of steam.  
  
But eventually the fighting stopped and the surface became calm; and so it was that ice first came to Gunsmoke. So far away from her mother sun, the steam coiling around the planet began to condense, becoming thunderheads, becoming sleet and hail and soft crystalline methane snow. Frozen precipitation met the hot surface of the planet and melted on contact, setting the whole sphere awash in a great ocean. But the snow still fell as the surface cooled, and Gunsmoke drifted ever further from the Great Sun; until finally all the ocean had frozen, and clear ice glazed the planet's black surface.  
  
The desert of snow and ice lasted for Gunsmoke's first few millennia, until something -- maybe some fluctuation in space or maybe the planet's own will -- shifted its course and angled it towards its mother. The planet, almost a living being of itself, slunk back towards the Great Sun until she settled into a more sedate orbit, within cosmic calling distance of her first kin.  
  
Ocean returned as the age of ice faded, but even as the water melted, it began to disappear -- the closer the child came to her parent, the more painfully bright her parent's love became. The atmosphere of Gunsmoke thinned and precious water escaped. Waves grew stronger, more violent, pounding at the pyroclastic flow of the land beneath; the porous black rock, already weak from the vice-like grip of the ice, relented without so much as a fight under the rough toss and grind of the water. More water escaped, vanished forever, while the land was broken by the very thing that should have saved it; and for the first time, the planet knew fear.  
  
But again, after a period of destruction, there came the calm afterwards; bled nearly dry, Gunsmoke hoarded her last remaining water away underneath her loosened surface, so that old air pockets became underground lakes and reservoirs. And the surface -- devoid of ice and water, crushed and crumbled into coarse gravel, encased in a thin atmosphere of phosphorous and nitrogen and the oxygen left over from the evaporated ocean -- The surface began to live.  
  
Millennia passed. A few cells found their inexplicable way into the underground water; they wriggled like infants, twirled like happy toddlers, and finally split like grown children from old homes.  
  
Some fused back together -- Gunsmoke's first lovers. Some split again -- Gunsmoke's first divorces. Some of the split rejoined others -- Gunsmoke's first love triangles.  
  
Some winked out of existence -- Gunsmoke's first deaths.  
  
And so the world moved on, little by little, growing and splitting and rejoining and loving itself and trying not to die and dying anyway and being reborn from the ashes. Every time life moved to land, it failed; every time land-life failed, ocean-life started over again, mulishly stubborn. The underground reservoirs were filled with phoenix's tears -- the smallest trickle of that precious water could resurrect a seemingly dead planet.  
  
Life grew. Like the Phoenix, the planet burst into flames -- volcanoes, wild solar flares, hellfire on earth. Twice, every living being on the planet died of disease save a few hundred amoebas living in a single stagnant lake. Still, life grew.  
  
Life grew despite everything. It grew like a fungus, unwelcome and unkillable. It grew with the tenacity of a man holding onto the side of a cliff by his fingernails.  
  
White sand blew in to cover the planet's surface. And still, life grew.  
  
And after so long trying, life began to _flourish.  
_  
It wasn't easily visible to the ill-trained eye, but desert life suited Gunsmoke better than even the planet itself knew. Lizards and snakes and small rodents developed, slowly losing their webbed feet and ancient amphibian natures and moving to the surface, where they lived under rocks and in the leeward faces of sand dunes. Birds of prey -- hawks, eagles, buzzards, vultures -- discovered the evolutionary loophole of _wings,_ which allowed them a higher place in the food chain. Lumbering beasts emerged to eat the newly-born coarse, dry grass; cacti found a way to grow above underground lakes and store water in their skin and spikes.  
  
The planet breathed deep, then, and laughed with this new glory, this new freedom. Joy like nothing ever known before; the joy of motherhood, the joy of creating and caring and loving.  
  
Gunsmoke was God.  
_  
------  
  
It was into this ancient, new-born world that a few ships carrying alien lifeforms crashed. It was into this infant heaven, this desert hell, that human beings took their first breath of clean air and new life ever since leaving their old home.  
  
It was into this new world that a few beings of a species never known before on any world settled. Angels... angels to the planet's God. Two others, also -- the fallen angels, the scapegoats, the first killer and the first victim.  
  
But for all their significance and all their age, a century was nothing compared to Gunsmoke's birth. In a century, one cliff might have broken into the ocean. In a century, one lick of the Great Sun's fire might have stolen a drink of water from the planet's surface. In a century, a single amoeba might have split in two.  
  
A century was nothing compared to Creation.  
  
Nothing at all._


	5. Ghost in the Machine

Author's Note: YES! Another new chapter within a week! The universe must love me.  
  
Again, a single thanks is just not big enough to say how grateful I am to my reviewers. I love you guys. ::hugs all around:: I can't believe my good luck in managing to get back on the writing horse, and it feels really good to know somebody has stuck with me.  
  
Probably no new chapter next weekend. It depends on how bad my stress level gets over the week -- I'm taking the PSAT on Wednesday. Wish me luck. ::sigh::  
  
--------  
Chapter Five: Ghost in the Machine  
--------  
  
How are you feeling?  
  
It was a ludicrous question to which Vash didn't expect an answer -- and he didn't get one. He sighed, palming the opacity control on the room's only -- really no more than a tiny hole punched through the wall -- so that the tinted fiberglass pane faded from a stark black circle to an empty hole as clear as air. Cool early-morning sunlight streamed in, although it was refracted at just such an angle as to appear the color of blood.  
  
Vash winced. The dawn twilight of the Child Sun, just before the Great Sun rose and turned the land into a snow-white desert again, was something he'd always loved. But now... now, somehow, red no longer called flowers immediately to mind. Maybe he was growing up, or maybe he'd just seen too much of the reality of one and not enough of the memory of the other -- but blood and flowers had lost their fragile center of balance in his mind.  
  
He turned to the other occupant of the room, who stared back at him with a lethargic, blank look that made him cringe. Knives had progressed no further than sitting upright in the nine days since his awakening. He said nothing, ate little, and refused to make eye contact with anyone but his brother.  
  
Vash wasn't sure how much he liked the attention.  
  
Staggering into the room adjoining his eight nights ago, sick with the irrational fear that Knives had escaped during Milly's two-minute absence from his bedside, Vash had been taken aback at the sight that had met him. He hadn't had any reason to be so terrified -- Knives hadn't so much as blinked, much less run away.  
  
But he had seemed... deformed, at first. It had taken Vash's panicked brain a few seconds to process his brother's strange position, curled around himself with all the covers on his bed gathered into a tight wad in his lap. His eyes were wide open, unblinking, dilated to the extreme and completely void of thought or emotion.  
  
Vash knew what was wrong with him. Somehow, he'd known it from the moment he woke up. That strange... calculator effect... had taken him again, debilitating his mind with figures and equations. Calculating... the position of Knives' arms, the angle of his ankles (feet toe-down against the mattress in a bizarrely awkward dancers' stance), his dilated pupils, the mass of sheet and blanket caught in a vice-like grip between his knees and elbows... even the blank expression.  
  
And Vash knew.  
  
After all, it was the way all of their race behaved, wasn't it?  
  
He sat down on the side of his brother's bed, smiling at him in the morning twilight, hoping that it didn't look too fake. They -- he and Milly and Meryl, and a few times Natalie herself -- had managed to coax Knives out of that demi-rigor mortis position over several days, depriving him of anything he could curl up around and forcibly holding his shoulders straight until he finally relented. He still sat hunched over, and still pulled his knees to his chest a lot, but he kept his head up and had gotten used to leaning against the wall.  
  
He never spoke throughout the entire ordeal.  
  
Can you hear me, Knives? Vash asked softly, searching his brother's cold eyes for any sign of life.  
  
No response.  
  
Vash sighed. He knew Knives' ears were working fine, it was just that his brain could no longer decode those electrical soundwave pulses into anything recognizable as language.  
  
Vash closed his eyes, leaning his elbows on his knees, blew out a slow breath, and opened his mind to his brother's.  
  
No matter what everyone thought, Knives _wasn't_ an empty shell. He was alive, awake, aware -- and completely uncomprehending of the world around him. Vash nudged gently against the surfacemost part of his brother's mind, eliciting an immediate and warm outflowing of welcome. In the outside world, the only visible change was in Knives' eyes -- a little of the dilation receded, a little bit of life returned to the dead rings of ice.  
  
Amnesia, Vash had told the others. It had happened to Vash every time before when he'd used the Angel Arm; why should Knives be immune to the side effects? Knives had fired the Arm multiple times and even activated both Arms at once -- something absolutely unheard of before that fateful day.  
  
Amnesia, he said, firm and knowing and resolute.  
  
Very few people believed him.  
  
Vash impressed a few simple abstractions into his brother's mind -- welcome; dawn; the feeling of wakings and beginnings and second chances. It was the only way he could think of to say good morning. Knives seemed to understand well enough, and sent back a similar impression -- tinted red, although Vash wasn't sure if that was supposed to mean the color of sunrise or something else entirely.  
  
So much strain, on both body and mind -- both Arms at once -- it was amazing Knives hadn't drained all his energy that day and keeled over on the spot. As it was, one wide black streak was prominent in his pale hair, and most of his roots were shadowed with dark gray. All of that strain had translated into a worse case of memory loss than Vash had ever experienced. Everything was gone -- not just the memories of that day, or even just the memories of the Arms and their creation.  
_  
Everything._  
  
Race memory was all that was left -- a strong knowledge of how to move in zero-gravity, and an inexplicable urge to curl around a spherical power source. Knives had retained the race memory of a bulb-bound Sister, but had lost whatever it was that made him _himself._  
  
Still, some things lingered... hints of personality too deeply ingrained to ever be forgotten. Knives didn't really remember what the concept of was, as far as blood and genetics were concerned, but he did know that he held a deep-seated, inexplicable feeling of warm affection for Vash. It was the kind of love that made him want to give Vash a hug when his brother's greeting-thoughts were tainted with sadness, even though he couldn't remember what a hug was, either.  
  
Vash slowly opened his eyes again, careful not to lose the tentative link with his brother's thoughts. He had managed to rebuild his barriers since that first overwhelming night, but he was still wary of losing himself in Knives' painfully abstract telepathy. Knives was just like a Sister, now... and trying to talk to the Sisters had always given Vash a headache. He'd embraced human language from a very early age, learning to speak out loud and promptly forgetting how to control emotions and images in thought-speech. Vash needed to be able to make clear definitions between words and sentences; he couldn't live like other Plants did, in a constant flow of abstractions and vague half-formed ideas.  
  
And what bothered him was that he knew Knives was the same way. Knives would never have admitted it past a certain turning point in his life, but when he and Vash were still young enough not to care about differences, Knives had confided to his twin that visiting the six Sisters on board their ship made him extremely uncomfortable. He'd said he always felt like they were laughing at him, as if there was some great joke he wasn't in on.  
  
It wasn't a joke, of course -- Knives had only been imagining that odd feeling of being excluded. The Sisters only laughed for the sheer joy of living, and their laughter was never scornful -- it was an invitation. The Sisters had only wanted their younger brothers to join them in the web of intertwined consciousness they all shared.  
  
Neither brother had never really understood them well enough to answer.  
  
Vash tucked one leg under the other and turned to face Knives, whose vacant blue eyes followed every slight movement he made. Cautiously, Vash nudged their mental connection, sending a flash of inquiry, asking permission to touch. Knives' response was instant and strong -- permission, welcome, invitation, embrace, curiosity.  
  
Raising one hand to Knives' blank face, Vash hesitated before brushing his brother's ragged, uncut hair out of his eyes. Knives blinked slowly, so unaccustomed to the sense of sight itself that he hadn't even noticed that anything was obstructing his vision. Vash let his hand linger, touching the black streak lightly and feeling the deadness there.  
  
It would take a long time for all that damage to heal... if it ever did. The black streak would probably remain, scarring his hair even after the gray roots cleared up into a healthier blonde. Knives would have six scars now, as a reminder of his final confrontation with Vash -- the remnants of five bullets and one massive energy drain.  
  
Vash murmured softly, moving his hand to the back of his brother's neck and leaning forward to touch foreheads with him. What have you forgotten? Where are you now, really?  
  
A faint note of confusion crept into Vash's mind from his brother, a tentative little prod, like a nervous child asking a weeping parent what was wrong. Vash sighed heavily, and let his barriers down a little more. He had discovered that physical contact helped him keep his thoughts under tighter control, so he could open up easier when he was touching Knives.  
  
Vash sent a brief feeling of empty, apologetic hopelessness.  
  
Knives responded quietly -- bewilderment tainted with the sting of fear.  
  
Lost, Vash thought back. Lost identity. Lost past. Lost self.  
  
No, Knives denied urgently, even more confused. Here. Always here.  
  
Vash accidentally said aloud, echoing the words mentally. You're not here.  
_  
I am._  
  
Vash had already started to compose a response before the reality of what Knives had just said sank in like a lead weight. His eyes flew wide open and he jerked back, breaking all contact with his brother.  
  
He'd just said something out loud in clear English, _and Knives had understood._ Not only that, but Knives had responded with words -- not an abstract concept or an emotion, but two utterly clear, separate English words.  
_  
You're not so lost after all, are you?_ Vash thought to himself, carefully blocking the question from Knives. Something was still there -- some instinct, some repressed memory? Vash wasn't sure. The only way he could truly know what was going on in Knives' head was to do a deep, invasive mental probe, and the very idea of it repulsed Vash.  
  
Hesitantly, Vash reached out and took Knives' limp hand in his. Their link opened again instantly, and he could feel the blank, angry, scared confusion coming off his brother in waves. Vash winced and closed his eyes, trying to send an apology that could be heard above the mental white noise that Knives was making.  
  
Finally, Vash managed to calm Knives down and convince him that he hadn't done something horrible or wrong to make Vash jerk away without warning. Not really thinking about how little the gesture would mean to his brother, Vash tucked Knives' hair behind his ears and forced a reassuring smile.  
_  
I have to go now,_ he thought to his brother, following up that sentence with a series of images that gave the impression of leaving; escaping; vanishing. Knives protested at first, but Vash repeated the series more firmly and Knives finally relented, sinking back into the comfortable web of light and thought he'd created for himself.  
  
Vash paused by the door, looking back. Knives' eyes had gone blank as pale slate again.  
  
But just for a second -- just for the length of a breath or a whisper -- Vash saw Knives' fingers curl into a mockery of a fist.  
  
------  
  
Knives was far from lost. Vash couldn't convince anyone but the Doctor of this, and the Doctor's health was failing, his loyal followers becoming steadily more unsure of themselves. Vash was fading from welcomed comrade' to silent stranger' in the minds of the ship-city's people. Meryl and Milly kept up the dangerous illusion of sincerity, but the little group's frail grasp on the common people's hospitality was becoming as threadbare as the coat Vash had worn for eighty years.  
  
The girls were fast losing their last hope of finding kindness in strangers. Vash didn't feel like correcting them. He knew that the people of Sky City still loved him, in some strange, deified way -- but they feared him even more. They feared their self-induced delusion of god.  
  
God -- earth-trembling, lightening-smiting God -- and His evil twin, the Devil himself.  
  
At first, Vash hated it. Passionately, violently _hated_ it. After a little while, though, resignation drowned out everything else, and he could no longer bring himself to feel more than the base emotions: fear... love... regret.  
  
Knives was far from gone. In the little time they had left in Sky City, Vash took it upon himself to teach Knives everything he could about being human. Every day, he learned a little more... every day, he moved a new limb, spoke a new word, rediscovered one of the physical senses. He remembered how to feel and smell and see, how to translate messages recorded by nerve endings, olfactory glands, retinas. He met Vash's turquoise gaze with his own blue one now -- not as a blank, dead thing, but as alive as a small child, and just as eager.  
  
Eager. No other word could describe Knives better. He clenched his fist constantly now, one of his favorite reflexes to practice while he was thinking. Vash knew it was only idle habit and instinct that made Knives do it, but he still couldn't help but flinch every time those pale knuckles became almost translucent-white, skin stretched tight over hard bone -- Vash watched Knives clench his fist and remembered what that fist felt like on his cheek, his ribs, his skull, cracking and splitting, dexterous fingers so delicately curled when in combat. Vash remembered that fist curled around the butt of a gun, and he couldn't help but feel that the buried, ingrained part of Knives' personality left over from his past life was trying to tell Vash something. Threaten him. Blackmail him.  
  
That steadily clenching and unclenching fist said, _Teach me more. Teach me more or we can start over from the beginning. Teach me more, and I will be sated, and all you'll ever see of the past are these white knuckles, and I will sleep._  
  
So Vash taught Knives. Fear and resignation ruled his thoughts; and some internal clock was ticking down to a deadline, but he didn't know what it was for or when it would happen. He only knew that inertia carried him forward now -- destiny, the wheel of fate, history repeating itself.  
  
Knives learned a little more every day.  
  
-------  
  
_Knowledge and human power are synonymous, since the ignorance of the cause frustrates the effect.  
_  
--Francis Bacon  
-------  
  
Afterword: Next chapter _will_ actually be in chronological order to the plot -- sort of. ::shifty look:: Chapter 7 will get back to the girls and the secondary characters more, I hope. There'll definitely be more all-twin chapters in the future, though, so no worries.


	6. Speak, Memory

The Amazing Universal Disclaimer: Don't own it. Won't own it. Can't own it. The end.

Author's Note: This is chapter 5 from Knives' point of view. Pay close attention while reading this chapter -- technically, the whole thing is in first person. In the beginning, however, since Knives has no sense of self, he doesn't name himself with pronouns like or He only calls himself -- not because he's dissociative, but just because he doesn't know any better. You'll notice that near the end of the chapter, there's a brief flashback (in italics) and that afterwards Knives starts referring to himself as and Vash as This isn't a POV change, just a change in how Knives is thinking.

---------  
Chapter Six: Speak, Memory  
---------

Do  
You know nothing? Do you see nothing? Do you remember  
Nothing?'  
I remember  
Those are pearls that were his eyes.  
'Are you alive, or not? Is there nothing in your head?'  
-- from The Waste Land (II: A Game of Chess) by T.S. Eliot  
-----------

There was an awareness of slow waking, like the awareness of dawn in the dark hour before sunrise. At first there was nothing to know but a feeling of emptiness, nothing to sense but moving twilight shadows and the sound of far-off mumbling.

Something was missing. Something was wrong.

Flickers of light like burning butterflies crowded the edge of his mind; he dreamed of them, whispered to them, longed to touch them. But they were far away whenever he needed them the most, burning into distant smoke on the horizon. Something was wrong with the light, with his mind... the butterflies refused to speak.

He spent a long time trying to reach them, longing mindlessly. He had no sense of mortal time. If eternity existed, he knew what it felt like.

Eventually he gained a sense of time based on periods of darkness and light, sleeping and waking. And after a while, he began to understand that something other than the butterflies was trying to talk to him. But this new voice was darker, more earthy. At first he was scared, because the butterfly-voices were small and airy like little chiming bells, but the new voice was deep and rich and much too close for comfort.

He slept for a while. He knew what sleep was now: it was the time of butterflies. When he woke, the butterflies burned to black ashes. Waking came with light; waking meant the deeper, earthy voice was speaking again.

At some point he realized that his mind was not the only part of him that was active. There were extremities that didn't think, but that could do other things: move, grasp, tense, hold, feel. Part of this discovery was fueled by the fact that sometimes there were pains in distant parts of his body that he couldn't account for. Like his back -- _(how did he know it was his back?)_ -- which cramped up a lot, especially after sleep. And his legs, which ached and burned when moved.

These curiosities kept him occupied and provided a blessed distraction from the butterfly-voices and the deep voice that tried to speak to him when he was awake. But no matter how much he ignored the new voice, it kept coming back. He didn't know why, but he held a vague fondness for the deep voice -- sensations flickered into vibrant life when it spoke, sensations of caring and nostalgia and childish dreams.

The deep voice made him happy in ways he couldn't explain... but for some reason, it always sounded sad, and he-it-_(was there such a thing as a name?)_ didn't know how to change that.

Then came the identity problem. He didn't have one; that was the problem.

He could identify other things, like the deep voice, the butterfly-voices, the back pain, the leg-ache. He flexed his mind as far as it would go and managed to name more basic things -- hunger, weariness, pain, love, fear, sadness. He knew these. There were words for them, he just couldn't remember what they were.

But when it came to self-identity, he knew nothing. Sometimes his right hand itched, and he thought that had something to do with his name, if he had a name. But he didn't know why.

It was enough to drive a person mad.

But he endured; he listened to the deep, sad voice, and even came to have entire conversations with it. It was all that kept him sane. He understood that there were many others with voices that lived near him, but he couldn't understand them.

Something was still missing. Something was still wrong. But he buried that flaw deep in the core of his lost self, and tried not to dream of it when he slept.

The butterflies still refused to speak.

Then one morning -- he knew the concept of though he couldn't say why -- the deep voice came to speak to him. It greeted him; he replied eagerly. The dream he had had the night before was fresh in his mind and he felt closer than he had ever been to knowing who he was.

The deep voice was weary and mournful. It asked him a question he didn't know how to answer, and he prodded back tenderly, like a child asking his weeping sibling what was wrong  
_  
-flashes of vast weightless cold, a storage room, a screaming burst of pain and then his little brother was weeping in his arms and what's wrong, aniki? you're crying again... I'll get us out of here, I'll get us out, _**I**_ will--  
_  
?

I am myself. I have a name. Me. A name...

And the deep voice had a name, too: brother.

The deep voice was closer than before, twining its thoughts with my own. (_my...?_) I flinched away, scared and confused by the strange flashback. The deep voice -- my brother -- didn't notice my sudden pain.

My brother told me he was sorry, but he couldn't help me anymore.

I showed him my fear and confusion in hopes of getting an explanation.

Lost, said my brother. Lost identity. Lost past. Lost self.

No, I thought back. Here. Always here. _(I want to make you happy, why are you always so sad? Tell me what's wrong with me and maybe I can make you happy again.)_

said my brother, You're not here.  
_  
I am._

Then there was a sudden surge of panic from my brother, fear and panic injected straight into the innermost parts of my mind, like shooting up some bad drug straight into the jugular -- I seized on that panic and screamed my questions at him, but he was gone. Completely and totally gone. I wept in my fear and loneliness, and for the first time since I woke from my butterfly-infested dreams, I understood what it was to be afraid of the dark.  
_  
The butterflies won't talk, the butterflies hate me, why do you leave me when everyone hates me and why are you so sad?_

Finally my brother came back and tried to calm me down, but I felt irrational anger towards him and refused to let him speak. He was apologetic and kind even through my noise. I found that I couldn't continue to rage against such a fond voice, so I relented.

My brother told me I had done nothing wrong, which made me feel a little better. He told me not to worry, that he would keep helping me. I relaxed.

After a moment he told me he was leaving; I stared at him with open eyes and protested. I saw the strange grimace on his face, and for the first time I began to think that maybe the way people moved said something about what they were thinking. I frowned inwardly at my brother's grimace. Was a grimace a bad thing?

He left anyway, and as I watched him go out the door (maybe these things were good for something after all), I flexed the muscles in my hand, thinking back to the way my brother would sometimes wave at me when he left. But I couldn't control my arm muscles enough to make a full wave, just a clenched fist. (For some reason, the fist reminded me of the pain and emptiness and broken black hole that I had buried in the dark recesses of my mind.)

My brother looked at my fist and a flicker of fear passed over his face.

And then he was gone.

-------------  
Hello,  
Is there anybody in there?  
Just nod if you can hear me.  
Is there anyone home?  
-- Pink Floyd, Comfortably Numb  
-------------

Review Replies (sorry I skipped these for a few chapters -- I'm not replying to everyone, there were just a few I wanted to comment on):

Yma: On chpt. 4 -- this Creation story (as it were) will probably come back to haunt me at some point when I try to fit it in later. Part of my deal with writing this fic the way I am (with alternating chapters) is to give myself artistic freedom to write dozens of different kinds of stories within one whole. Some of the alternate chapters that don't fit with the main plot are really more like separate short stories than plot devices. Everything will fit together eventually, though (although I'm still working out the details... ::sweatdrop::). And I'm so glad you still like it so much! I really love this story, so I try not to rush it when I'm writing... I've really never tried anything this hard or written anything this good before. .

the Prince's Jewel: Thankies muchly! ::waves All Hail Grammar banner and cheers:: I love the English language, so I try not to butcher it too badly. .

Glass Bullet: Wow, thanks... I really am making an effort to keep this story as tightly-woven as possible. My writing vice is a tendency to ramble until I dry myself out, so this story is an exercise in writer's discipline for me. It's really gratifying to know that it's working.

JRaynmaker: ::big hug::


	7. Intersections in Real Time

The Amazing Universal Disclaimer: Don't own it. Won't own it. Can't own it. The end.

Author's Note: ::dies:: OMG, I just finished a second chapter in as many days. This is scaring me. Anyway... story-wise, nothing much to say. Chapter consists of four conversations in real time. And a nod to Babylon 5 for the title.

---------  
Chapter Seven: Intersections in Real Time  
---------

_There will be time, there will be time  
To prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet;  
There will be time to murder and create,  
And time for all the works and days of hands  
That lift and drop a question on your plate;  
Time for you and time for me,  
And time yet for a hundred indecisions,  
And for a hundred visions and revisions,  
Before the taking of toast and tea._  
-- from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot

'Speak to me. Why do you never speak? Speak.'  
-- from The Waste Land (II: A Game of Chess) by T.S. Eliot

----------

Is he speaking yet?

Vash sighed at Natalie's question, picking at his food despondently. She slid the door shut behind her and sat down on the other side of the small table, watching the blond closely. They were in Vash's room -- Meryl had moved to her own room after Vash recovered well enough not to need a 24-hour watch.

He's moving more, Vash offered eventually, taking a bite and barely chewing before swallowing with a grimace. Natalie had never seen him so unenthusiastic about food, and it bothered her.

Wasn't what I asked, she said quietly.

I know, he replied.

They sat in silence for a while.

He talks to me, Vash said finally. Sister-speak. I can't seem to explain vocal cords.

Natalie looked up from a small burn that scarred the table, which she had been studying for the past few minutes.

He asks me things, Vash mumbled, staring at his plate. About himself. I can't answer him.

Natalie gave him a level look. Why not? Wouldn't it put him at ease? It'd be worse to let him worry himself into madness. _Again,_ she added inwardly.

I don't know, Vash said wearily. If I told him what he used to be, would he remember it? Would he go back to that? I don't want that.No one does.Then what am I supposed to do?Why are you asking me?Because it's your planet that has to live with us, Vash said ruefully.

Natalie frowned. Don't talk like that, Vash. This world is your home, too. This ship is your home.You wouldn't think so if you asked around.Not everyone hates you.Wanna bet?

Natalie huffed and stood up, crossing her arms and imposing the full power of her five-foot-four grandmother-of-three death glare on the cowering gunman. Vash the Stampede, if you don't stop wallowing in your own self-pity and start doing some good around here, I swear to all that's holy I will rip out your complete lack of a spine and _stomp_ on it.

Vash's eyes widened and he pulled one of his patented shock-faces. Whoa, scaryyyy. You don't have to resort to death threats, ya know!

Natalie gave a satisfied grunt and sat down again. Much better. You looked almost normal for a second. Vash almost smiled at that.

After a minute Vash asked, How's Doc?

Any good feelings Natalie might have managed to bring out were instantly annihilated. She sighed, rubbing her temples with one hand. Not good, kiddo. You might wanna see him soon.I saw him this morning, Vash said weakly.

You might wanna go again, Natalie said quietly.

Vash let out a soft breath. He'd known since four days ago, but he'd been in denial; Natalie's words were simply the final nail in the coffin.

he asked.

Natalie said simply.

I've watched people I love die before, Vash said, almost defensively.

He took care of you for his whole _life,_ Vash. It's okay if this time is different.

Vash's lips tightened to a thin, pale line. He said nothing.

Natalie sighed and stared sadly at her toes. I miss you, Vash. I miss who you used to be. When did you change?

Still, Vash said nothing.

After a moment longer of silence, Natalie stood. I have to go. They need me in the med bay. I jus' wanted to see you, kiddo. You gonna be okay?

Vash looked away, bit his lip to distract himself from the burning tightness in his throat. he said finally.

Natalie bent down and hugged him briefly, but his return embrace was weak and he let go much too quickly. The old teacher nodded once, knowingly, and started to the door. See you in a while, Vash. Don't forget your little insurance girl -- she's waiting to talk to you.

Vash nodded and lifted his hand in a small wave. Natalie sighed and left.

He sat still for a long time, food forgotten, trying not to see his blurry color-block reflection in the battered metal doorframe. (All white shirt and blue jeans and blonde hair. No red. No red at all.) After a while, the burning in his throat went away.

He didn't cry.

---------

Hey, bro! S'the old geezer dead yet?

Michael Jones grimaced and thumped his head on the metal doorframe of the quarters he shared with his aunt Elene and younger brother Tom. (Short for Thomas, and oh how the jokes about farm animals had flown when they were younger.) Michael severely didn't want to deal with Tom tonight -- but Aunt Elene was taking a shift at one of the surviving Plant sites, so he didn't have her to protect him from his brother's jabs.

Michael and Tom suffered from... how to put this nicely?... a rather strained relationship. Maybe that was part of the reason why Michael had been assigned as the Stampede's doctor. Everyone knew full well that young Mike Jones the intern didn't have the first clue about normal Plant structure, and the infamous blonde twins were anomalies even to their own species. Natalie-sensei could lie through her teeth better than anyone Michael had ever known when she claimed he was a top-notch med student. How the hell was Michael supposed to keep Vash the Stampede alive and healthy when he couldn't even keep a houseplant alive for longer than a week?

Which was why he suspected that he'd been given the monumental assignment of caring for the most infamous man on the planet for some reason other than his medical prowess. He suspected that it was because he could relate. He suspected that it was because his brother was as big a bastard as Knives, but on a decidedly smaller scale.

As far as Michael knew, Tom had never killed anyone. But then again, Michael was never quite sure if Tom was joking when he asked Michael for suggestions on where to hide the bodies.

Tom called from the kitchen, you didn't bring anything to eat, didja?

Michael gritted his teeth. Aunt Elene was supposed to leave something for you to get ready. You know I'm too busy in the med bay to get anything.

Tom poked his head through the doorway and scowled at his brother. Elene's food is crap. I don't want it.Too bad, you're gettin' it anyway, Michael replied, pushing past his irritating brother into the kitchen. They were only four years apart (making Michael 23 and Tom a great whopping 19), but Tom always acted half his age.

Twenty minutes later the food Elene had left them was ready, although by the time he was done cooking, Michael was so tired he could barely get his jaws apart to eat. Tom took more than his share. Michael didn't say anything -- he was long used to Tom's mean-spirited, petty hypocrisy.

So, you didn't answer my question, Tom said, plopping down on Aunt Elene's nice new chair and leaving Michael with the old one that squeaked and crackled. Old man kicked the bucket yet or what?

Michael pressed his lips into a thin line and counted to ten before answering. He's critical. It'll be soon.What's he got?

Michael glanced sharply at Tom. None of your business.It's contagious, isn't it? Tom gave Michael a wide grin. His teeth were too white. I've watched some of the old films they keep restricted, you know, the old Earth movies. The government always keeps the plague secret until everyone's already dead.

Michael groaned and rolled his eyes. You're a moron, Tom, you know that?

Tom replied by stealing a bite from Michael's plate.

Michael ended up letting Tom have most of his dinner, since spending eight straight hours reprogramming the med bay mainframe and enduring the chaos of minor injuries since the crash had kind of dampened his appetite. _Wonder why?_ he thought ruefully. He cleaned up after dinner, wondering as each second passed how on earth he managed not to fall down. Tom slouched in the living area, sulking. That was fine by Michael; sulking meant blessed silence.

I'm going to bed, Michael said when the last dish was dried and put away. He didn't even glance at Tom on his way to the bedroom door.

Tom said just as Michael palmed the door panel. Michael glanced back into the living area, startled -- Tom hadn't called him since the good old days of Thomas/tomas bird-brain puns. Mike, I've been thinking.Don't hurt yourself, Michael replied automatically, then cursed himself for saying it out loud. Old habits died hard, especially between siblings.

Tom shook his head, unamused. I been thinking, what about this whole thing with the twins, you know? Th' old geezer's got two feet in the grave now and no one's gonna be around to stop the crazy one if he comes out of his coma.  
_  
Coma? Is that the cover story? I didn't even know,_ Michael thought nervously. _What if I say something wrong...?_

Vash-san can take care of his brother, Tom, Michael said reassuringly. And Doc's leaving us with everything he ever knew about what makes those two tick, so we'll know how to help.Do you know how to kill them?

Michael glared, but the expression was mainly cover for the sickening somersault his stomach did at Tom's brazen question. Why would we want to? We want to help them._You_ want to help them, Tom said, looking directly at his older brother and showing an alarming display of lucidity. _I_ want to help the ship and the city. What if the Stampede or his crazy bastard brother gets out of hand? Do we know how to protect ourselves?

Michael took a deep breath. His fear was ice-cold, but he didn't let it show. They won't hurt us, Thomas, he said coolly.

But what _if,_ Michael? Think rhetorically for once.I didn't think you'd even know what rhetorical means, Thomas.

Tom stood up slowly, eyes ablaze. 

Michael didn't repeat the insult. I said they won't hurt us. Can't you take my word? I'm your brother.Knives is Vash's brother, you think Vash takes _his_ word?Actually, I do, Michael said coldly.

Then we're all fucked, aren't we? Thomas laughed harshly. We're all screwed over seven ways to Sunday because that goddamn broom-headed lunk is willing to take his own genocidal psychopath of a brother's _word._

Michael was silent for a moment, trying to stop feeling like he was about to throw up. Tom met his gaze and they stared at each other, silent and calculating.

What's happened to you, Tom? Michael asked finally, desperation tainting his voice.

I've grown up, Thomas said simply.

I'm sorry.Don't be.I'm going out, Tom said finally, turning away.

Michael sighed, letting his shoulders sag as soon as his brother's back was turned. Come back before dawn. Tom said evasively.

Michael was too drained and weary to protest. Go, then, he said with cruel finality, leaving his little brother to whatever mad fate he'd devised for himself. Get outta here. He slouched into his bedroom and closed the door behind him.

Tom looked back once before he left. he began softly, almost sadly. But Michael had already shut himself away, and couldn't hear.

----------

Meryl found Vash five hours after he promised to talk to her, catching a glimpse of him in a hall near the med bay. He was walking stiffly, almost limping. She looked at his legs, worried he'd hurt himself, but there was nothing visibly wrong. She called out his name when he didn't appear to see her -- he slowed, but didn't turn around to look for the caller.

She caught up to him within a minute and fell into step at his side. Casting a sideways glance up at his face, she saw that his eyes were somewhat bloodshot -- although they appeared to be dry, which seemed odd, if he'd just been where she thought he'd been...

How's the Doctor? she asked timidly, not quite sure how to approach the subject in her out-of-place state.

Vash slowed down more, allowing Meryl to keep up without having to quick-march to match her short strides to his long ones. Meryl looked up, waiting for an answer.

He's dying, Vash said shortly.

Meryl winced and scrambled to change the subject. I'm sorry, I didn't mean to -- look, Vash, I wanted to talk to you.I know... Natalie came by earlier and reminded me.  
_  
How long ago is _ Meryl wondered. _How long have you been avoiding me?_ She sighed, rubbing her temple. Well, I wanted to talk about Knives...Doesn't everyone? Vash said ruefully.

Meryl grimaced. Knives and Milly, she continued, more than a little irritated now. How long are you going to let her guard him? I don't feel safe with only her in there.

Vash looked down at her for the first time since they'd started talking. But the other guys are taking shifts, too. Reeves and Brodsky are in there now.I know, I know, Meryl huffed. But Milly volunteers for all the night shifts -- she sleeps in the same room as him, dammit! I want her out, Vash. I know you want to help your brother, but please don't put Milly in danger. Let me take her place, if anything.

Vash mouthed for a second, at a loss. he said, dumbfounded and pained beyond comprehension. Meryl -- he can't _hurt_ her. He can't even hurt _himself._ He doesn't even know his own _name_ yet. Why're you so worked up over it?

Meryl fought back her annoyance and crossed her arms instead of snapping at him like she wanted to. Maybe the fact that he tried to kill us on multiple occasions doesn't count for as much as I thought it did, she said coolly.

Vash's mouth tightened and he glared for a second. He's not like that any more, Meryl, he said defensively. He's changed.He has amnesia. That's not changing, that's just a ticking time-bomb waiting for the right trigger to set it off!Is this all you actually wanted to talk to me about? Vash asked coldly.

No, _actually_ -- I just wanted to say that you look like hell and you're acting stranger by the day. Meryl huffed and uncrossed her arms, letting her clenched fists drop to her sides. She stopped in the middle of the hallway and turned to face the gunman, who obligingly matched her actions. Something is _wrong_ with you, Vash.Terribly sorry, short stuff, but I'm afraid I don't know what you're talking about, Vash said sarcastically I'm great. Just peachy.

Meryl fought back tears of frustration and stomped down hard on the steel floorplates of the hallway. she exclaimed. Just_ listen_ to yourself!

Vash started to open his mouth for a snappish comeback, but something -- maybe something Meryl said or maybe the desperate undertone in her voice -- made him stop. He hesitated for a second, eyes going unfocused and refocused and unfocused again in a matter of seconds. In the end he slouched, defeated.

You're right, he muttered. I don't know what it is. I'm just so tired. Tired of hurting, tired of teaching, tired of watching people die.

Meryl relaxed her clenched fists and felt the pent-up anger drain out of her at the sight of Vash standing so broken and pathetic in the middle of the old, partly-twisted hallway. _If only Knives had known how successful he would be when he set out to make this poor man suffer,_ Meryl thought, biting her lip and reaching up to pat Vash's arm.

How much does the Doctor mean to you? she asked finally, hoping to get Vash to talk about his hurts. _Sharing pain heals._

Vash sighed deeply and cast his blank gaze along the empty hall. When I first shot Knives, his father was the one who found me collapsed in the desert, Vash said softly. Doc was with his dad on his first trip down to the planet's surface. That was over eighty years ago. He was just a little kid then.He took care of you that whole time?

Vash nodded. I spent a long time on this ship. I would leave for maybe a year or two, but I always came back. If I ever had a home, this was it.

Meryl thought of the way the people of the ship-city were treating Vash now and her guts twisted painfully.

Doc was the one who kept designing and redesigning my new arm, Vash added, flexing his mechanical fingers thoughtlessly. It was his search team that found me half-dead just outside the ruins of July. Doc was the only one familiar enough with my body to be able to salvage what was left of my arm and bring me back to life.

Meryl listened silently, hardly daring to breathe, much less interrupt.

Vash looked down at her and smiled sadly. Doc devoted his life to saving mine. How am I supposed to live forever with that kind of love haunting me?Oh, Vash, Meryl sighed. She looked down, swallowed hard against her tears, and thought. Finally she said, I think you should be with him when he goes. That would pay back at least a little of the debt, right?

Vash flinched visibly at her words. I know I should, but... am I weak if it hurts too much to do it?

Meryl frowned. Vash, doing the right thing has never hurt too much for you to do it. What's wrong?

Vash shrugged weakly. My mind, it's... working with Knives is wearing on me. I just don't feel like myself. He sighed and stuffed his hands in his pockets. I'll stay with Doc, he said quietly. I have to.

Meryl felt cruel for suggesting it, but now the deed was done and she couldn't take back her words. Besides, it really _was_ the right thing to do... no matter how much it agony it caused.

You should get some rest, Meryl said finally. You look terrible.Thanks a lot, Vash muttered.

Meryl made a face. I'll check on Milly... it's time for her shift with Knives anyway.

Vash glanced down at the short insurance agent. You still worked up about that?Maybe, but it can wait, she replied shortly. Go to bed.Yes, ma'am. He gave her a mocking salute and walked off.

Meryl shook her head, watching him go.

---------

The little black cat had been following Jessica for an hour now. It would twine around her legs at just the right moments to nearly make her trip, and it was starting to get on her last nerve. At the moment she was carrying two dangerously full bowls of hot soup, and if the cat were to finally succeed in its mission to trip her... well...

she hissed at it. If you make me drop this, I swear I'll -- I'll -- pull your tail!

The cat nyaoed loudly and got out from between her legs like a bolt of lightning. It looked balefully up at her from the side of the hall.

Jessica rolled her eyes. Fine, you can follow me, just stop getting in my way. Whose are you, anyway?

Of course she got no answer from the cat, so she let it go.

Mere moments later she reached the room she was heading for and tapped the door carefully with her foot, so as not to let go of the bowls. The door slid open almost instantly.

The cheery, broadly-smiling face of Milly Thompson greeted her. Hallo! What brings you here, Jessica?

Jessica smiled back, trying not to look at the other occupant of the room, who was staring at her. Vicky-san sent me with food for you and... him. She's working double shifts in the kitchen now. And there's pudding in my pocket, if you'll take these...

Milly's eyes sparkled as she took the bowls from Jessica and set them down on the table. Oh, wow, they found some? she asked.

In the very back cold-storage pantry, Jessica grinned. They had to do some excavating to get the door open, but everything in there was time-sealed and fresh. It's perfect -- we won't have to trade with another town for months. She pulled two chilled pudding cups out of her deep apron pockets. There's loads more if you want to go down to the kitchen sometime.This is perfect, Jess! Thank you! Milly gave her a one-armed hug and smiled brightly.

Jessica shook her head, laughing. She'd really never known anyone with such an indomitable spirit -- even Vash (though she hated to admit it) was obviously showing the strain of having so much pressure on him at once.

Have you eaten? Milly asked suddenly, looking mildly concerned.

Jessica nodded. I don't have anything to do, though, so I thought I'd stay and have dessert with you. She produced a third pudding cup and several spoons from a second pocket hidden in the folds of her apron.

Oh, of course! Milly leaned towards Jessica and spoke in a low, confidential tone: Not to be mean to Mr. Vash's brother, but you're much better company than him.

Jessica giggled. I'll bet. She finally dared a glance at Knives -- he was staring at the wall now, sitting up cross-legged in bed with his hospital shirt falling off of one shoulder. His hair was uncut and shaggy. You know, I didn't think a serial-killing maniac could look so undignified, she said, snickering.

Milly just smiled and started on her soup. I'll let his cool down first, she said by unnecessary way of explanation.

They ate in silence for a few minutes, until Jessica put down her empty pudding cup and took a deep breath. Ms. Milly?What is it, Jess?

Jessica turned to look at Knives again -- his cold blue eyes were blessedly closed. How's he doing? I mean, really?

Milly shrugged, also turning to look at him. Fine, I suppose. He's healing. And Mr. Vash is teaching him things, so...Teaching him what? Jessica asked quietly.

Normal things... how to talk, how to eat.What if... what if he remembers who he is?

Milly looked troubled, although her voice was still light and cheerful. Well, he'll just be himself again, won't he? Everyone should be themselves.

Knives opened his eyes then, and turned to look at them. Jessica shivered, wrapped her arms around herself and hunkered down as if to hide. But what if... what if things go back to how they used to be? She asked this more of Knives than of Milly, staring straight into his icy gaze as she spoke. What if he remembers how to hate?

Milly bit her lip for a second, then stood up and set her half-empty bowl down. Picking up Knives' dinner and a new spoon, she went to sit on the bed next to him. He looked over at her blankly.

I think, said Milly, fiddling with the spoon, that when it comes time, Mr. Vash will probably leave with him, and we won't have to worry about it. Mr. Vash never likes to make other people worry.

Jessica shivered again. If they leave, will you follow them?

Milly thought for a second. she said finally. I have to. I love them.Even him? Jessica nodded at Knives.

Milly smiled softly -- almost sadly, although the expression was so strange on her that Jessica hardly believed it. It's not that simple.

Jessica was silent. Milly turned towards Knives at last, nudging his face around so she could talk to him and have access to his mouth. Now, Mr. Knives, it's time for dinner, she said softly. Jessica was reminded of nurses tending the invalids and elderly in the med bay. She looked away from the undignified scene while Milly kept whispering gently.

Finally the soup was gone and Milly stopped talking. She put the bowl down and moved to stand up, but Knives leaned his forehead against her shoulder in an obvious request for her to stay.

Mr. Vash really is teaching you, isn't he? Milly smiled, running her fingers through Knives' uncut hair and patting his back. Knives sighed deeply and closed his eyes.

Jessica watched the two, torn between being horrified, dumbfounded, and strangely happy. _Does she know everything that man has done?_ Jessica thought, staring. _Doesn't she realize that she's comforting a murderer? How can she be so kind after... after... (don't think the name, don't think Brad)..._

But that wasn't true -- because right now, Knives _wasn't_ a murderer or a madman. He was a blank slate, an empty shell with only enough knowledge to eat, sleep, and take comfort from a kind hand. He was pathetic. And all of a sudden, Jessica found herself pitying him.

It's all right, Mr. Knives, Milly said kindly. You can go to sleep now.

He pressed against her harder. She sighed, rolling her eyes, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders. He relaxed. _(Why does he crave human touch so much?_ Jessica wondered. _I thought he hated humans...)_

Milly hummed to him, like she would hum to a baby or a very old man.

Jessica's eyes widened slightly as she realized something: _If he does remember who he used to be, will the knowledge of this kindness help him fight it? Is that why Milly's doing this? To save him, like Vash wants to?_

Knives was drifting off now, slumping down further against Milly's side, eyes squeezed tightly shut. She stopped humming to lower his head to the pillow. Like a mother or a big sister, she straightened the crooked shoulder of his shirt before pulling the blanket up around his chin. Still smiling, of course... as always.

Just before he drifted off completely, though, Knives opened one eye a fraction and parted his lips. Milly leaned down to pat his head reassuringly. Now now, go to sleep, she said cheerily, not paying attention to the way his lips moved.

Jessica noticed, though; she stood and walked over to Milly's side slowly. Knives' lips were still moving. she said quietly, I think he's trying to talk.

Milly's smile faltered. Oh... I think you're right... She knelt down at Knives' side to listen. Can you speak any louder? she asked futilely, knowing Knives couldn't really understand her.

His eyes closed again, but his lips moved one last time. Jessica managed to read them.

Jessica said hollowly.

Milly looked up from Knives' sleeping figure. What is it, Jess?He was asking you something.What did he say?Who am I?'

--------------  
_Through the years you've always loved me  
And my life you've tried to save..._

...Throw your loving arms around me  
I am weary, let me rest.I Am Weary (Let Me Rest), traditional  
--------------


	8. Emotion Sickness

The Amazing Universal Disclaimer: Don't own it. Won't own it. Can't own it. The end.

Author's Note: This may be my favorite chapter _ever._ It's one long dream sequence. I wrote it in one night... the storyline gets progressively more twisted and random as it goes, which pretty much mirrored my own state of mind at the time, as I was getting steadily more delirious from lack of sleep.

Usually when I dream, I tend to _know_ I have something/somewhere/someone I need to do/go/talk to, but constantly changing surroundings and people and ideas always keep me from getting done with what I started. Maybe that says something about me? Hn. Oh well. Anyway, it was a sensation I was trying to capture in this chapter.

Cookies to people who can find all the movie/book quotes and references.

----------  
Chapter Eight: Emotion Sickness  
----------

Our late editor is dead. He died of death, which killed him. --John Lennon  
--------

The building was on fire, and it wasn't his fault.

You really did it this time, Tongari.But I didn't _do_ anything!You're the outlaw!What's that got to do with it? _Deja vu..._

Wolfwood started ahead of him into the burning school. Did anyone ever tell you you're an idiot?

Vash threw his hands in the air and followed the wayward priest. Do you even have to _ask?_

Inside, parts of the floor had collapsed and the ceiling creaked dangerously. The heat from the flames bothered Vash -- wasn't his coat supposed to be better thermally regulated than this? There wasn't any smoke, though.

Wolfwood lit up. Vash sighed in relief. _Now_ there was smoke. He breathed deep and coughed.

Don't do that, Tongari. Secondhand smoke'll kill you.You shouldn't smoke, then.What, this? He waved the cigarette. It doesn't matter. I've got a better way to go all planned out.That's not what I--Where're the kids? Wolfwood interrupted.

How do you know there're any kids?It's a school, there must be kids. They need help. They might be trying to save the cat, which would mean they're trapped.

Vash nodded. For some reason, that made perfect sense.

Let's split up and look for them, then, Wolfwood said, spinning on one heel and starting off towards the nearby stairs. I'll take the second floor.

Fear clutched at the pit of Vash's stomach -- _Wolfwood, don't go there, don't go there, something's waiting, it's dangerous!_ But all that came out of his mouth was, Wait, Nick, you forgot your -- Wolfwood vanished over the top of the stairs 

Vash hefted the metal cross -- the wrappings had been burned away at some point and were lying at his feet, still smoldering. Suddenly he began to notice the smoke. His eyes stung, but he blinked back the reflexive tears and headed off into the deeper parts of the building.

he called into the darkness -- the only lighting came from the spots of fire, although it had been noon outside before they came in. Hello, is anyone here? Does anyone need help?

The darkness was overwhelming. Heat-shadows flickered on the walls and in the centers of darkened classrooms -- movements out of the corners of his eyes made him spin around so often that he was lost before he knew it. The school was a lot bigger on the inside... some of the doors were metal, too, with panels like ships' doors. Coughing violently into one gloved hand, he walked up to a random door and palmed the panel. It slid open...

Hey, Vash, I've been looking for you! Meryl pulled him inside. Typewriters clacked incessantly and the fluorescent lights blinded him after the dark -- it was the Bernardelli main office. Glass double doors swung shut behind him and he spun around, panicked, but the school was gone.

But the kids -- he began. Wolfwood -- they need help --Oh, that terrorist priest can take care of himself, Meryl said dismissively. The Chief wanted to talk to you; hurry! He doesn't like it when people are late!

Vash allowed himself to be dragged through the open-aired main floor, which was filled with little gray drywall cubicles and curious faces peeking over the tops of padded walls. Milly waved from outside one of the windows, dressed in a black apron with a big white cross splashed down the front. She was holding a bucket full of dirty wash-water and a little black cat, who was struggling mightily to get out. As Vash waved back at her, he saw her toss out the water, cat and all, and listened with a feeling of vague, sick horror to the descending nyaaaaoooooooooooo.....' from outside.

Meryl jerked on his arm again. Oh, that's all right, Milly was just late to work for three years, so she's on undertaking and window-washing duty for the next few hours.But the cat --!Cats always land on their feet, you moron. Hurry up!

There was a hallway on the far side of the main floor. Wolfwood's cross banged against the doorframe and snagged on a corner. Vash, who was still holding onto the cross for dear life with one hand and being dragged forward by the other, jerked to a halt in the middle of the hall.

Stop it! he yelled at Meryl. You're tearing me in half!

Meryl gave him a disapproving glare and pulled as hard as she could on his true-flesh arm. Let go of him, Vash! We have to _go!_Him? But -- Vash looked back at the cross and saw that it wasn't the cross, it was Wolfwood. Back through the doorway, the Bernardelli main floor was full of black smoke and screams -- the people inside their cubicles were struggling and grabbing onto anything they could get hold of, which included the back of Wolfwood's coat.

'S'okay, Vash, Wolfwood coughed through the encroaching smoke. He waved one hand dismissively. You go on, I can take care of myself.What happened to the kids?! Vash tried to yell, but at that moment Meryl gave one final yank and managed to literally tear him in two -- his mechanical arm fizzed and sparked as the synthetic nerve connections were shredded. Vash screamed in pain. Meryl began dragging him down the hall again, away from Wolfwood, his arm, and the fire.

Vash, catch! Wolfwood called, throwing his arm at him. Vash tried to, but he could only lift the still-sparking stump where his arm used to be. The mechanical arm clattered to the floor, useless. The fingers were still twitching.

Vash begged Meryl to stop so he could help Wolfwood, save the kids, get his arm back -- but her only response was to shout, We're going to be late!

The hallway seemed to go on forever. Not like one of those weird perspective shots where a tunnel seems infinite when it's really only a few feet long -- because Vash was certain this wasn't an illusion. The hall was just really, really long.

Finally Meryl pulled him to a halt in front of an official-looking door with a name printed in block letters on a glass panel with intricate designs sandblasted into it.

Only a few minutes late! Meryl said breathlessly. Hopefully he won't be too cross. You better hope luck is on your side, Vash.

Vash was too busy staring at the name on the door to hear her. Words couldn't _begin_ to describe how utterly ridiculous he felt.  
_  
Eugene Geoffrey Mine._

E... G... he muttered, mouth completely dry.

Meryl went stark white. Don't _ever_ call the Chief that! He hates his initials! You _must_ call him Eugene, or else.

Vash couldn't answer, as he was too busy laughing. He couldn't help it; he didn't care how much trouble he got in with the Chief; he just couldn't stop cackling -- it wasn't even the good, healthy kind of laugher, either; he was caught in a fit of screaming hysterics, unable to breathe, crying tears of mirth and insanity.

Meryl huffed loudly and shoved Vash into the Chief's office, slamming the door behind him. And I hope you get demoted, too, you disrespectful little punk! he heard her shout through the fancy glass panel.

The office was spacious and lush, with little green houseplants placed in an aesthetically pleasing way around the perimeter of the room. There were two desks, one in the center of the room and a smaller one to the side; the big one was covered with neat stacks of papers and the small one contained a single typewriter. A tall woman with long black hair and an eyepatch was hunched over the ludicrously small typewriter, picking out words key-by-key with one finger. The nameplate on her desk read Sandra Dee Cyclops.

Vash recovered enough breath to look down at the woman in the small desk and ask, 

She looked up only long enough to glare at him, then went back to work.

I'm afraid Ms. Dee doesn't like to be interrupted, said a grating, nasal voice from behind Vash. Rather fixed in her ways.

Vash spun around again. He was getting tired of spinning around so much.

A short, scrawny man with long arms and spiked purple hair was standing there in a dark gray Armani suit and blindingly shined shoes, looking for all the world like the world's snobbiest billionaire. Vash started laughing again, so hard that his side felt like it was about to split and a raccoon headache began to bloom behind his eyes.

Hey, _Eugene!_ Vash cried. Tell me, where are we going and why am I in this handbasket?

Eugene Geoffrey Mine curled his nose up disdainfully at Vash's behavior and walked over to his desk. His fingernails were long, pointy, and painted a deep shade of lavender. I've been getting reports about you, _Mister_ Saverem, said Mine curtly. His voice was still as nasal and clueless as ever. Vash kept snickering.

I'm sure-- gasp --there's been some-- snort --mistake, Mr. Mine-- giggle --because I don't-- cough --work here, you see. Vash regained enough composure to make at least three words of that sentence almost sound serious.

I'm afraid you're going to have to be demoted, Mister Saverem, Mine said, casually stamping something in red ink on a paper in the middle of his desk.

Vash coughed again and waved away Mine's words. Well, that's great and all, but I really have to be going -- I have children to save and my friend is probably being eaten by zombie insurance agents right now, so... He started towards the door.

Not so fast, Mister Chickenshit! Mine shouted, planting his fist on the desk dramatically.

Uh-huh, sure, bye --  
_  
Sandra Dee!_

There was a flicker of movement out of the corner of Vash's eye and suddenly a trapdoor opened underneath him, dumping him unceremoniously down through several floors. He looked up as he fell and saw Mine and the Cyclops waving at him. He sighed and waved back just before he hit rock bottom.

It was _literally_ rock bottom, he saw as soon as his concussion passed -- it was a cave. With a fire in it. And an exit. With starlight outside.

I thought it was noon a while ago, he murmured, scrambling to his feet and heading for the exit.

That's what happens when time passes, ya dummy, said a voice behind him.

Vash spun around yet again, making his splitting headache come back. he commented.

Wolfwood was sitting by the fire with a bottle of Wild Turkey in hand, bent cigarette almost burned down to the filter. Wanna drink? he asked, holding up the bottle.

Vash hesitated, but some little sane part of his muddled brain reminded him that he was supposed to be doing something. He wasn't sure what, exactly, but he thought it was important.

Wolfwood, what are you doing here? Vash asked, frowning. You were at Bernardelli.I haven't been to December in weeks, fool, Wolfwood chided, taking a swig of whiskey and standing up. You must have seen my ghost.Don't be ridiculous, Nick, Vash returned. There's no such things as ghosts.

Wolfwood snorted. How would _you_ know? Ever been dead?Where's my luggage? You were supposed to keep it safe for me.I was? Vash frowned again.

I left it with you in the schoolhouse. Where is it?It turned into you.Don't be ridiculous, Vash, Wolfwood echoed his words; there's no such thing as crosses that turn into people.

Vash shook his head. Look, did you save the kids or not?I was following you, you idiot -- of course I didn't. Vash retorted angrily. Children are more important than me! Why'd you do that, Wolfwood? I thought you were a _priest,_ goddammit!

Wolfwood shrugged. If you were a priest, wouldn't you be more interested in saving an angel than saving children?Who said I was an angel? I'm not an angel!Rem did.Then Rem was wrong!

Wolfwood simply looked at him. Vash realized what he'd just said and put his single trembling hand to his mouth, shocked.

Vash began, voice quavering dangerously.

Wolfwood turned away. Don't call me that.

Vash squeezed his eyes shut, rocking back and forth on his heels. _I said... I said Rem was... I said..._ Then what can I call you? he asked finally.

The priest looked up once more, but this time the roots of his hair were lighter, his eyes were a colder blue, and his smile was mad as the March Hare. You can call me Onii-chan, Vashu. All the children do.

Vash cried out and fell to his knees as if the words had been a physical blow. The light from the little fire in the cave was making Wolfwood's clothes look more reddish and gave his hair a backlit halo that almost made it look bleached -- almost... like... pale blonde...  
_  
_ Vash screamed, scrambling to his feet and staggering away, tripping over pebbles and slamming his shoulder into the rock wall of the cave. A tall blonde shadow fell over him, blocking his way.

Aniki, why do you run from here? Can't you see this place is Eden? Everything else is clearly dying.It's a cave, a goddamn _cave,_ Vash gasped through gritted teeth, trying to ignore the feel of grass under his knees and sunlight playing on his eyelids that said otherwise. What do you want with me?I want Paradise with you, Vashu, said his brother's soothing voice. Knives knelt beside him and placed two gentle fingers under his chin, lifting Vash's smudged and weary face to meet his clean, aristocratic one. Open your eyes, Vash. Look around you. This is Eden.

Vash opened his eyes against his own better judgment and beheld a magnificent vista of blues and greens -- everything the desert planet of Gunsmoke could never be. The trees were in full leaf, flowers exploding with color and the sounds of growing, of life in every way, shape, and form surrounding him, and he was buried in the perfect green silence of the world --

A tear slid down his cheek. Knives... why do you hate me? he whispered. I don't understand you, brother.How could I hate you, aniki? Knives breathed into his ear. How could you think I hate you, when I give you this? His perfect, angular white-gloved hand gestured outwards to encompass the whole view.

Vash shook his head, so weary and so sad that he could barely speak. This isn't real, Knives. This is a dream.It doesn't have to be a dream, Vash.Yes, it does... look, there. There's _my_ dream. Your nightmare.

Vash pointed. They were sitting on the summit of a small forested mountain, and down the slope there were children playing. Human children.

Knives just smirked. You can't have light without darkness, Vash -- you can't have dreams without nightmares. What about a compromise -- I'll live with your dreams if you'll live with mine.

Vash felt a sick sense of knowing, and he reached out to grab his brother's arm with his single hand. Knives, what are you --Your nightmare, Vashu. Knives caressed the side of Vash's face one last time, then stood and gazed down the slope at the playing children. Vash looked at them as well -- and all of a sudden he noticed that one of them had a burn on her elbow and another had soot in his hair.  
_  
_ Vash staggered to his feet, delirious with pain and exhaustion. Wait, those are the kids from the fire -- those are the kids I need to save -- _stop! Knives, please stop!_

Knives continued to stare down the hillside at the children, who gradually stopped playing and began to stare right back at him.

Knives, what are you doing? _Knives!_

For the first time in his life, Vash couldn't think of anything to do. He threw himself in front of his brother, between the children and their death, but he couldn't stop what had already been started.

The children started walking away, into the woods. Vash tried to grab one and pull her back, but she growled and bit his hand before running off to join the others.

Stop! God, whatever you're doing, _please stop!_ Vash grabbed the front of his brother's immaculate red-and-white suit, staining the pure fabric with dirt and sand and fire-black soot. he whimpered, weeping with frustration. 

Knives looked down at him. I told you to call me Onii-chan, Vash. Why don't you listen when I tell you things? He batted Vash's filthy hands away and returned his gaze to the woods. Distant screams began to seep into the quiet sound of growing things, staining the green silence to a muddy blood-soaked brown.

Much better, Knives said, smiling lightly. Isn't this better, brother? He gave Vash a genuine, kind smile. The smile of a true believer, of someone fully devoted to a single truth. The same smile Vash saw in the mirror every day for a hundred years...

Vash shook his head in silent horror. No matter how hard he tried, he could neither speak nor run.

Eventually, the screams stopped. Knives continued to smile. Vash felt like vomiting, but he couldn't do that either.

a muffled voice called from the woods where the children had gone, breaking the silence. Master, I can't seem to... find...What is it, Legato? Knives called back, finally looking away from Vash. I thought I told you to put everything away when you were through playing. I refuse to have flies in my Eden.

The undergrowth at the edge of the trees rustled briefly. I know... Master... Another rustle and then the blue-haired telepath was stumbling into the clearing, holding a hand to his temple and looking dazed. His trademark white coat was missing. Without its added bulk, Vash saw just how gaunt and ill he really looked. But... I think something's wrong, sir, Legato said, somewhat slurred.

Knives gave an exasperated sigh. What is it now, spider? Can't find the ice cream you like in the kitchen? It always has to be _something_ with you. Stop-hurting-me-this, don't-send-me-on-a-suicide-mission-that, what the hell, you even told me you loved me. What was that about, I ask you? Legato, stop moaning and listen to me! Knives glared down at his minion petulently. What the hell's wrong with you? Usually you're groveling prostrate on the ground worshipping me by now!

Legato stumbled again. The fingers clutching his temple were stained red, and there were splashes of blood across his chest and shoes. I think... I think... he mumbled hazily, unable to finish his sentence.

Get it out, man! Knives snapped.

I think I'm broken, Master... help me, please... I... Legato stumbled one last time and fell to his knees, trembling like a leaf. He looked up with glazed amber eyes and pulled his mop of blue hair aside to show Knives his forehead.

There was a bloody entrance wound in his left temple from a .45 caliber Colt.  
_  
_ Knives turned angrily on Vash. Did you do that? he raged, pointing accusingly at the mortal wound and striding down the hill towards his horrified brother. Do you know how bloody hard it is to find good minions these days? Vash, you hypocrite! Of all the people you had to go and kill --

Vash took a step backwards to get away from his ranting brother, and tripped over Legato's pale, bloody form. The telepath smiled serenely up at him. It hurts a lot your first time, the dead man murmured, but after a while the pain feels really nice.

Vash clapped his hands over his ears and screamed wordlessly at the top of his lungs.

---------  
_  
I am no prophet -- and here's no great matter;  
I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,  
And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,  
And in short, I was afraid._

-- from The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock, by T.S. Eliot

---------

And then Vash woke up.

His face was buried in rough sand, but there was shade over him -- maybe an umbrella? Or the shadow of a building?

There were voices nearby -- small, tinny voices. He listened groggily.

Yes, phalanx two reported in, sir.How's our status?One of our operatives was killed, sir.In action?No sir, it was made to appear as a suicide. The official reports say he jumped, but we have definite reason to believe that he was thrown by a window-washer. Traces of soap and grit came back with the fur analysis, and the medical team said he was soaking wet when they found him, sir.A bath, sir.

An audible shudder. The worst kind.Anything else, sir?No, private. Good work. Report back from phalanx two whenever you have any leads on this assassination plot. I must see the head of my Order, Neko the Kuro. He will know what to do. Dismissed.Yes, sir.

Vash blinked. His eyelids felt like lead weights. He'd figured out where he was -- a back alley somewhere, probably a big city. He didn't know how he'd gotten here.

A few moments later a small black cat came trotting around a corner, looked at him haughtily, licked its paw, and _nyao_ed once before trotting away down the alley.

Vash muttered, dragging himself into a sitting position. He leaned against the stone wall behind him and was just preparing to go to sleep again when an all-too-familiar voice spoke into his ear, Hey, Tongari, you ever read the Bible?

Vash nearly jumped out of his skin. He shoved the owner of the voice into the dirt and nearly fell on his head in his panicked attempt to put some distance between himself and the other man.

Wolfwood just pointed and laughed, butt in the sand, getting his black suit stained brown with desert grit.

Vash _hmph_ed and stood up, jerking his coat on straight and brushing dust off his shoulders. He noticed with some mild annoyance that he was still missing his left arm. What are you doing here, Wolfwood? I was supposed to have woken up already. This dream is really starting to piss me off. Wolfwood said, dreams never end. He pulled himself to his feet and patted down his jacket pockets for the paraphernalia of his habit.

Don't breathe that at me, Vash said, making a face as Wolfwood lit up. I've had enough smoke for one hallucination, thanks.

Wolfwood shrugged, but obligingly turned away to exhale. So, Tongari, you didn't answer me.

Vash blinked again. I asked if you'd ever read the Bible.

Vash blinked again, feeling stupid. Oh, that. Not really. I only had access to books on the ship with Rem, and the Bible just wasn't as interesting as Peter Pan and Tom Sawyer...

Wolfwood exhaled again and forgot to turn away. Vash coughed and glared. Nick said unapologetically.

Why do you ask? Vash asked through gritted teeth. Yes, this dream was _really_ pissing him off now.

Wolfwood fumbled in his back pocket and turned up a beaten, well-thumbed copy of Christianity's holy book. Mind if I read to ya? He grinned toothily.

Vash rolled his eyes. This is just ridiculous. Somehow seeing you with a Bible is almost as ludicrous as seeing E.G. Mine in an insurance office...Aw, c'mon, Wolfwood pleaded, holding out his hands in the universal beggar's clasp. I got some parts marked I know you'll like...

Vash turned away. Leave me alone, he said coldly. I want to wake up. He turned and began to walk away down the alley.

Vash! What's wrong with you? Wolfwood sounded annoyed now. Footsteps trotted to catch up with the blonde.

Stop following me, Wolfwood, Vash said through gritted teeth, walking faster. He emerged from the end of the alley into bright noon sunlight. The outskirts of town -- perfect. It would be easier to lose the rambling priest here. Vash kept walking.

said Wolfwood's voice from behind him, I'll just read, then. The rustle of pages accompanied the priest's footsteps for a moment, and then Wolfwood cleared his throat. Matthew, chapter five -- the sermon on the mount, also called the Beatitudes. Verse 3...Wolfwood, shut up, Vash growled, walking faster still.

Blessed are the poor in spirit, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'

There was a man sitting out on his porch as Vash and Nick passed, looking despondent as he counted up figures on a scrap of paper. His wife came out to give him a glass of water and a kiss. He told her some bad news and she bit back tears.

Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted.'

Jessica was sitting against a wall in a cramped alley, hugging her stuffed rabbit and mumbling something under her breath; an apology, maybe. Vash thought briefly about going to her, but he knew he needed to keep walking. The compulsion wasn't something he wanted to question too closely.

Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.'

Vash glanced to his right and wasn't at all surprised to see Milly playing with a little band of outcast kids. She smiled and waved. Vash waved back, but kept walking.

Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.'

Something bumped against Vash's toe. He looked down and saw a small green apple. Bewildered, he stepped over it and kept walking. There was something up ahead, he could feel it -- a cool breeze was blowing in his face, soft and teasing and almost salt-scented, like...

Behind him, Wolfwood saw the apple and smiled sadly before turning the page.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.'

And then Vash stepped out past the last house and saw the water stretching out as far as the eye could see. His heart skipped a beat. he whispered disbelievingly. He trod softly down to the edge and peered in at his reflection.

Blessed are they who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.'

Turquoise eyes that blended into the color of the water stared back up at Vash. When his first tear fell, it broke the reflection into a thousand tiny waves. Vash breathed.

Pages rustled again and the old leather cover creaked shut. Vash could almost hear Nick's smile.

I knew you'd like that, Vash. Vash said softly. He turned to thank the other man, but the street behind him was empty.

So Vash turned out to look once more at the ocean, and he thought to himself how much more like Paradise it would be to have an ocean in a desert than to have monotonous green perfection for eternity. How could you take it for granted, when there was such a vast source of life in the middle of such a sun-baked world? More the miracle, this, than any oasis or grove of palm trees.

So, Vash thought. Amen to that.

-------

And then he woke up.

-------_  
bones sinking like stones  
all that we fought for  
homes places we've grown  
all of us are done for  
and we live in a beautiful world_  
-- Don't Panic, Coldplay  
--------

Review Replies:

Glass Bullet - Huh, I'm glad I have review alerts, because your ch. 6 review doesn't seem to show up on FF.N... ::kicks FF.N:: Eh, oh well. If you envy my originality, then I envy your ability to write KxL. ::sigh:: I'm really struggling with writing a KxL flashback that's coming up in the next few chapters. (There, a spoiler just for you. ::g::) Anyway, thanks so much for your review! Keep reading and I'll keep writing!

the Prince's Jewel - Hehe. Actually, I'm glad you think it's scary -- because it's gonna get scarier. (Rated R for a reason...)

Yma - New chapter just for you! Heh... I wish I could always whip out something new whenever someone says more soon! Guess you caught me on a good week. ::g:: Thanks so much as always for your awesome review. It really made my day (which was not so good, but that's another story) and gave me a fresh kick of inspiration to get chapter 9 done. I'm glad you like Mike and Tom... they'll definitely show up again in chpt. 9, so be ready. Keep checking back, I've got Christmas break soon so there's a high likelihood of my actually getting a decent chunk of writing done! ::g::  
--------


	9. Mob Physics

The Amazing Universal Disclaimer: Don't own it. Won't own it. Can't own it. The end.

Author's Note: After far too much nerve-wracking editing and overwhelming school stress that combined to delay this post for nearly three weeks, I finally - FINALLY - present to you: chapter 9. This chapter makes me proud and twitchy at the same time. Hope it works.

And HUGE thanks go out to Yma, who betaed for me and was a great help in both the editing process and the process of easing my nerves. Thanks muchly!

-  
Chapter Nine: Mob Physics  
-

_Beep. Beep. Beep._

It wasn't a cliche hospital room. The walls weren't stark-white, it wasn't freezing cold, the nurses didn't wear scrubs or filter masks, there weren't little computer monitors with jagged glowing green lines marking off each fleeting second of a tortured life. Nothing like the ancient films that Thomas Jones loved to sneak into the restricted libraries to watch.

No, actually the hospital area was fairly comfortable - it was spacious, warm, and had obviously been decorated by somebody's mother.

The walls were a salmony-cream color, sponged over with dark orange for texture. They gave Vash mental images of sandstorms in the deep desert.  
_  
Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep._

The only thing cliche about Sky City's med bay was the smell. It was the same smell that permeated hospitals everywhere: the germy, greenish-yellow smell of illness overlaid with a sterilizing chemical tang and just a hint of cloying perfume. Air freshener. Worse than smog, and twice as bad because the intentions behind it were well-meaning.

And then there was the heart monitor. The incessant, softly chiming heart monitor.  
_  
Beep. Beep. Beep._

It was true that there weren't any monitors or machines sitting around in the main areas or looming over patients' bedsides, but that didn't mean they weren't _there._ They were always tucked away discreetly in control rooms and monitoring chambers, and the only sign that they existed was the soft, steady beep of a heartbeat coming from a tiny speaker near the headboard of each bed.

When the heartbeat stopped, there was nothing else after. Silence always greeted a patient's passing. The ship's people had seen enough of the old movies to decide that mankind had outgrown the garish trauma of announcing death to the world with a droning flatline and futile, exaggerated scenes of CPR and defibrillation.

For now, there was only the steady chime of a heartbeat, slowing with each passing minute.

Vash curled up a little closer to himself in his chair, and turned a brittle page in the ancient book he was trying to read as a distraction. The spine read _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance._ The title made him think of Wolfwood, but not in a gut-wrenching sort of way - actually, the memories were one of the few things that had made him smile today.

Earlier, he had found an old copy of the Bible and read most of the book of Matthew. That was _not_ one of the few things that had made him smile today. He mostly tried not to get the pages damp, but he knew the librarians were going to be upset with him when they discovered the saltwater specks marring the cover of their most well-preserved copy.  
_  
Beeeep.  
_  
Pause.  
_  
Beep. Beep. Beep._

Vash glanced over at the occupied bed next to him and watched the little hitch in the Doctor's breathing pass and settle back into a steady rhythm.

"You don't have to stay on my account," Vash told the unresponsive, fragile old body. "If you have someplace better to be, then you should get going."  
_  
Beep. Beep. Beep._

Vash shrugged and gave a sad little sigh. "If you insist," he muttered, and went back to his book.

-

Sky City's inhabitants had put its empty bulk to good use over the past century, taking the equipment that was already there and expanding it until it ate up the emptiness and filled the cold metal halls with a strange, electronic kind of life. The medical bay itself was the first and largest of the spaces to be filled, but since then the chemists, biologists, anthropologists, librarians and curators had all staked out their own little pieces of dead air, their own little corners of the ship's vast computer network.

The city's scientists worked tirelessly to preserve a dead culture - for three generations, delicate, decaying paper-bound books had been recorded verbatim into the computer mainframe, and shattered films had been painstakingly restored as well as anyone knew how; the black box recordings of the Great Fall had been examined and re-examined and re-recorded and played backwards and picked apart piece by piece, whisper by whisper, in some vain attempt to recapture the voices of the lost people of Earth.

Maybe it was ridiculous. Maybe it was an obsession that would fade away over the next century. A lot of information was destroyed or corrupted when the city crashed and two of the Plants died; the ship's people were struggling to regain the level of connection they had once had with their ancestors. Maybe... maybe they'd lost too much footing.

Maybe there was nothing left to regain.

-

Now, here's a better cliche: a poorly lit room, tainted with the scent of stale smoke and smuggled alcohol, with the riffling sound of playing cards being shuffled blending into the background murmur of low voices. Snatches of overheard conversation announced illcontent and unease among the speakers.

"What about the guards?" "My cousin Ron couldn't keep watch to save his life and they've got him on the frickin' night shift..."

"... coma?" "I thought he was locked up..." "Vash-san goes in and out all the time..."

"... does anyone here have a... a gun I could borrow until this blows over? I mean, I don't want to use it, not really - it's just that my dad's so sick and he's getting older, and I worry sometimes..."

The low murmurs settled into silence when the door slid open, apprehensive eyes glancing up from under furrowed brows. No one made any kind of move, not like outsiders in the desert would have; they weren't _that_ barbaric, not yet. They just looked up, baleful and a little scared, prepared to cower or run or lie through their teeth, as needed.

But it was only Thomas. A little sigh of relief whispered up from the depths of the room, and everyone went back to filing their regularly scheduled complaints.

Thomas edged into the room quietly and kept his head down, knowing he wasn't exactly the most welcome person there. Everyone knew his older brother was taking care of Vash, and although it wasn't a source of outright _resentment_ among his fellow psuedo-rebels, it was definitely a point of contention and not something Tom wanted to stir up trouble over. Tom's connections to higher places made him something of an outsider here. These people were not scientists, not curators of an ancient and dying memory; they cared nothing for Earth and little for Gunsmoke itself. They were the rebellious teens, the scared parents, and the old-timers too deeply rooted to adjust to a new planetside life.

They were a mismatched bunch, really. The only thing they had in common was a niggling doubt, the seed of a terrible fear - that maybe, just maybe, everything they knew was doomed.

The end of the world as we know it. (Some old song from a tired, crumbling world.) The end of the world as we know it, and I feel fine.

Tom made his way into the back corner, where he sat down at a circular table without greeting the other four people already there. The brawny woman to his right - maybe in her late forties, early fifties, with iron-gray hair and a frozen expression - offered him a cigarette. He shook his head.  
_  
Today,_ he thought nervously, turning his plan over and over again in his head. _Today I won't be an outsider anymore._

"Hey, Tom," said the boy across the table from him. His name was Vincent and he was younger than Tom by two years, but infinitely tougher. His family did maintenance work. Not like sweeping floors and scrubbing shelves: more like reattaching bits of the ship that fell off. Three of his four uncles had died in accidents in the past couple of months. (Maintenance work had suddenly gotten a lot harder after the crash.)

"Hey, Vince," Tom said, keeping his voice level.

"Is something wrong? You're here early," asked Cynthia, peering worriedly at Tom. Cynthia was 26, the mother of two, both of whom had suffered serious injuries in the crash and one of whom had lost her vision and hearing. Outwardly, Cynthia blamed Knives for her childrens' scars and handicaps, but most people who knew her could tell that she hadn't quite accepted Vash's innocence. She acted nervous, as if she were guilty about it - but the blame was there, deep-rooted and corrosive.

She still had the sweetness and sensitivity of a mother, though. There was something universal about motherhood, just like there was something universal about hospital-smell.

Tom looked up at her and tried to give a reassuring smile. "Just a fight with Mike," he said calmly. "Nothing big."

"You got something?" asked Vincent, leaning on the table and tapping a chewed-up pen cap against the battered metal surface.

Tom shifted in his seat. "Coupla days ago you mentioned you wanted to get a good look at him."

Vincent nodded, poking the pen cap between his lips and shredding it even more. He didn't take his eyes off Tom.

"Well, I've snuck a look at Mike's files on the two," Tom plunged ahead, "and the coma thing is just a cover story."

The older woman with the iron-gray hair nodded. "We figured that," she said. Her name was Pam. Pam Brodsky. Her husband was one of Knives' security guards. She tried to talk him out of the job, but they had a falling-out and he took the gun with him when he left. Now she was scared and lonely - not that she was going to let it show anytime soon.

"Okay," Tom assented. He shifted again. "But thing is, the file I saw was dated a few weeks ago. So he's been awake for longer than anyone thought. But, well, the files say he's basically a vegetable with open eyes, but I heard Mike talking to Susan Bligh from the biochem lab and she says that Vash-san says that Kn- that the other one has amnesia."

"Amnesia?" The last person at the table finally spoke up, making the "meeting," as it were, official. Charlie was the backbone of the operation. Vince may have been the most expressive and radical of the bunch, and Cynthia definitely had a knack for solving internal conflict (being a lifelong veteran of sibling rivalry), but Charlie was the mortar that held their wayward stone personalities together. If not for Charlie, there wouldn't be anything vaguely resembling organization among the psuedo-rebels. Most of the people in the dim room only came there to talk about their worries and take the edge off their fear; Charlie came there because he meant to _do_ something about it.

He was the kind of guy that other people respected. He was the kind of guy who, with one mildly inquisitive word, made the entire table fall into expectant silence.

Tom cleared his throat, blinking water out of his stinging eyes - he hadn't blinked for a while. Didn't want to look suspicious, right? Right. "Yessir," he said, giving Charlie the honorific that no one else at the table seemed to deserve. "Well, that's thirdhand information, but it's what I've got, sir. Believe it if you want. I don't really," he added daringly. He hadn't voiced many opinions before now, other than the general anti-twins sentiment shared by the masses.

Charlie nodded, curiosity assuaged for the moment. "Go on. Something else about the files."

"The files, right. They had the watch schedule in them, sir," Tom said, trying to look humble about what he hoped was a great breakthrough. "I copied them out. By hand, sir, 'cause the techs would have asked questions if I'd borrowed a terminal with a scanner."

Vince and Cynthia glanced at each other, expressions betraying their surprise. Pam looked pleased. Charlie just nodded again, and said, "Good work, kid. Anything else?"

Heartened by the positive reaction from the others, Tom gave a shifty grin and carried on speaking in a jumble of increasingly-excited words. "Well, sir, the files are old so the watch has obviously changed some by now, but I've been keeping an eye out and it must not have changed that much, sir, because most folks I see going down that way are right on time according to the schedule. But theyre getting lax at night, is what I'm getting at, sir. Used to be five shifts a night, so each shift would be completely awake, but now it's down to two, and the longest chunk is all handled by that outsider girl. The big one."

"The simpleton?" Pam said brusquely, a little bit of meanness tainting her voice. Cynthia shushed her with an offended look.

"I think she's smarter than she puts on," Charlie said mildly.

Pam had the decency to look contrite at that.

"So what are we saying, we're taking out the big girl and sneaking in at night?" Vince sounded doubtful.

"Well, it was you who wanted to see him," Pam said reproachfully.

Charlie silenced them with a gesture. "We're saying nothing yet," he said with finality. "It was only Vince who wanted to go at first, that's true, but I know he's not alone in that sentiment. Is he?"

Pam hesitated, then looked down. "Yeee-ah," she said, drawing out the word; "I'd have a look too, if I could get it. Maybe more than just a look." That meanness was back again, and there was a steel glint in her eyes this time.

"No violence," Charlie said harshly. "Not yet. But we're agreed on wanting to catch a glimpse of the devil."

Everyone said yea, although Cynthia dragged behind and gave her assent in a troubled tone.

"Then we watch for a few more days," Charlie said. "Get this schedule pinned. Maybe we'll get a lucky break, or something'll come up - it's been a while now, and you can feel the storm building under the surface. Something's gotta give."

Too true, that. Tom coughed nervously, thinking of his argument with Mike.

"Pam, see if you can talk to Ron again, hey?" Charlie ordered brusquely.

"Sure thing."

"Cynthia, get word around to the midwives. Doctors, too, s'long as they're ours. Vince, maintenance. They've got eyes in more cracks and crannies than a college kid in a strip joint. And Tom - good work. Keep it up, kid."

Tom flushed with pride.

Charlie stood. "For now we'll go on with what we started. Give it a week, probably less, and then we'll see."

And that was the end of it. Or, as might be more accurate, the beginning.

-

Meryl went with Vash to the med bay every day, though more often than not she stayed outside the Doctor's room, talking to the nurses and helping where she could. There were a good many people on the ship who were antsy to leave, to get to a town and start living a more stable planetside life. Those types tended to seek Meryl out for advice, which she was perfectly willing to give.

While Meryl talked to the ship folk, Vash continued to stay with his dying mentor, trying to convince the old man that his death would be a relief to the living, not a burden. It was no use. The Doctor was little more than a shell of flesh and sinew - the only part of his conscious self that remained was his stubborn tenacity. Inertia held him to this existence, nothing more.

The Doctor was one of the few still breathing easy, in fact - an unsettled quiet lurked underneath the noise of everyday life, the silence of a hundred lungs remaining perfectly still.

The people held their collective breath, and waited.

-

Knives woke to the sound of the door hissing shut.

His pale blue eyes shone in the dark. He kept his body perfectly still as he took in the darkness, absorbing and adjusting to it, until he could see as clearly as a cat.

Milly had gone. She'd been sitting in the chair across the room, dozing and pretending to read while she waited for Knives to fall asleep. That had been about six hours ago, by Knives' estimate - he was getting better with recognizing units of time, and he'd been pleased to rediscover his alarmingly accurate internal clock.

Maybe she'd gone out to use the bathroom, or switch with another guard? Knives was a little bothered by the fact that he needed to be guarded - he was still trying to figure out what was so dangerous beyond that door that needed to be kept out, or why he was important enough to need guarding.

Knives shifted slightly, making his bedcovers whisper into the silence. For the past few days he had been feeling stronger, more energetic - and for the first time, his restlessness was overcoming his pain. The wounds still ached, but his mind ached more - he craved movement, action, some kind of leverage to move forward, some kind of milestone to mark the passage of time.

He shifted again, rolling onto his uninjured side, and stared across the room to Milly's empty chair. Maybe he should call for her? He could speak now, thought haltingly, and Vash had taught him all their names.

(His own name bothered him the same way the guards did. On some deep level, he knew it had some double meaning, but he hadn't quite made the connection and a stabbing pain shot through his head every time he thought too hard about it. He'd learned not to think much about anything anymore. The pain was unbearable, but, of course, the morbid curiosity was even more so.)

The metal floor panels were colorless in the faint moonlight. Milly liked to leave the portal-window transparent at night, so she could read by moonlight while Knives slept. The other guards always turned off the transparency when they came in.

Guards... they should have switched off by now if they were going to, and Milly didn't take this long to go to the bathroom or to make a late-night pudding raid on the kitchen. Maybe something had happened?

The restlessness was burning now, and remaining still was almost a physical pain. Knives needed to stretch, to work his atrophied muscles, or he thought he'd go mad (and the thought of going mad was unsettling in the extreme, thought he couldn't say why). What had Vash called this? "Stir-crazy."

Finally, Knives moved. It was a spontaneous movement, and at first Knives had the disconcerting feeling that his body had gone out of his mind's control. But then his bare feet were touching the cold floor and he was moving of his own volition again, standing shakily and drifting in a few unsteady baby-steps to the door.

Now what? Knives stared at the closed door, unseeing. He didn't know what was beyond it, aside from the glimpses hed caught when people came and went. He'd seen a hallway with bright lights (although those would be off now) and sometimes other people, staring wide-eyed into his room.

Staring at _him._  
_  
This door was made to keep me in,_ he thought with a sickening jolt. _There is no danger outside these walls. I _am_ the danger._

Of course, he'd known that already. On some deep level, he'd always known that there was something wrong with him. But admitting it to himself was... deeply disturbing, to say the least.

And another thing he knew, deep down, when he reached out one trembling hand to touch the glowing panel beside the door, was that he was making a huge mistake.

He didn't care.

-

"You hate him, don't you?"

"I -"

"He killed your family!"

"The crash -"

"He caused the crash!"

"Yes..."

"By rights, he shouldn't exist! Plants are supposed to stay in their bulbs -"

"He's an abomination."

"They both are."

"Say you hate him! How can you not, after everything?"

"But the girl hadn't _done_ anything, Vince!"

"She was protecting him! Just like his idiot brother."

"She was keeping _us_ safe from him, not -"

"What's been going on behind that door, dammit? He's been awake for nearly three weeks, but no one's even told us that much. We need spies just to know when he sleeps. What else aren't they telling us?"

"That's all true, but Vince, the girl -"

"Shut up about her! She doesn't matter!"

"Vince -"

"Your mother's _dead,_ George! You, all they found of your older brother was an arm and a foot - and _you,_ your cousin Lara -"  
_  
"Shut up!"_

"He deserves this, goddammit - he deserves this hate. Stop being cowards!"

And then Vincent had them, like a dozen marionettes tangled in their master's string. He continued rousing their passion, incensing their rage, but the words themselves didn't matter anymore. Only the red film glazing their vision mattered. That, and the fact that the devil's prison was only two halls away.

But one still had doubts - one held back, just for an instant, gazing down at the prone body of the woman Vincent had ambushed without warning. Her honey-brown hair covered her face. Blood trickled down the back of her neck.

Then Thomas Jones thought of his brother Mike, and all their fights and dissonance and mutual hatred, and forced himself to remember that he had new loyalties now.

He turned away from the unconscious woman and ran to catch up with the other boys.

-

Knives drifted down the corridors like a ghost, keeping mark of his surroundings so that he could find his way back. His bare feet made a soft padding sound on the metal floor. For a few precious minutes, silent wonderment ruled his thoughts, all fear forgotten - the architecture was so alien, so magnificent, and yet so familiar at the same time that he felt like a child in a museum. He felt tiny and insignificant in the face of so many unknowns.

Walking was not something he was accustomed to - he'd paced his room a little, but nothing more than that. He'd only turned five corners, walked a total of maybe thirty yards, before his legs started feeling the strain. He kept moving, though, telling himself that he was trying to find Milly, although in all honesty he didn't have the first clue where to start looking.

After a while, he realized that he had gotten turned around. With a small sigh, he admitted that he really wasn't going to do any good by just wandering around. Besides, if Milly got back to the room and found him gone, she'd panic. He retraced his steps and started working his way back through the darkened halls.

A couple of turns away from his room, Knives heard a sound, extremely faint, besides the padding of his own feet. It was a rhythmic thudding, like footsteps, but... more than one person, and running.

And Knives knew deep down that somehow, everything had just fallen apart.

-

It was Tom who saw Knives first, Tom who made the first move.

A glint of moving white caught the corner of his eye, and he spun around midstep, nearly knocking over the younger boy named George - the one with the dead mother.

"Hey!" George complained, staggering before regaining his balance.

Tom pointed. George followed the path of Tom's accusing finger, and saw a ghost of a man flitting around a corner at the end of the hall.

"It's him!" George cried without thinking. Vince doubled back in an instant, took a single glance down the hall, and made a break for it. George was barely a split-second in following. It took the other boys a second longer to reorganize themselves, but then one of them was grabbing Tom's shoulder and shoving him forward, and he had no choice but to run along with them or be trampled.

The sheer, crushing force of hatred surrounding him made Tom feel sick and dizzy, but he didn't dare slow down. The boys were one body now, sharing a single vengeful spirit, and Tom was afraid of them. Afraid of himself, for being one of them. But -

All Tom knew of the next few minutes was that Vincent was screaming something and that there was a foreign body inside the net of the mob - someone taller than the rest of them, thin and ghost-pale, with shaggy hair, colorless in the dark, that hid his face.

A faceless enemy. Just what everyone had said he would be.

Someone had produced a pocketknife. There was blood now, darker than the shadows that lined the walls - and the faceless ghost was staggering. Tom thought he might have kicked the man in the stomach, but he wasn't sure - one foot was anyone's foot at this point.

Tom's brain was screaming at him to stop, to rethink - _this is wrong, this is wrong, this can't possibly be right_ - but it was far too late for that. He gritted his teeth, forced himself not to think at all, and fell in with the rest as they descended, a pack of wretched vultures feeding on the weak. Tom felt something wet on his face, salty. Tears or blood? He couldn't tell. He didn't want to know.

The faceless man was silent. Tom wished he would cry out, scream, beg, _anything_... if he could prove his humanity, or at least his pain, the boys might stop and take notice. But when one side was faceless and silent and the other was a powerful web of bodies sharing one collective rage, what hope was there?

Tom started waking up and smelling reality... at the exact moment that Vincent plunged the already-bloody pocketknife into Knives' abdomen.

"Vince!" Tom yelled, horrified.

"Damn you!" Vince was shrieking into Knives' face - the Plant's hair had fallen out of the way, and now Tom could see his expression: blank, uncomprehending fear.

"Vince, stop it!" Tom cried without thinking, lunging towards the enraged boy to pull him off of Knives" unresponsive body. "He's got amnesia, Vince, he doesn't know who he -"

Two of the others caught Tom around the waist and slammed him backwards, winding him completely and leaving Vincent free to twist the knife deeper into his victim's gut.

Tom didn't see what happened next - bright blue stars and dark spots were busy swimming across his vision as he struggled to catch a breath. All he knew was that he heard a voice that didn't belong to any of the boys - a voice that seemed to echo in his skull and beat against the inside of his ears like a drum. He didn't catch what it said.

And the next second, there was a deafening quiet, a lull in the sound of fighting that could only have been caused by a turn of the tide.

Tom's gasps were the only sound in the split-second silence. He forced his eyes open - and saw Knives crouching like an animal, pale mane once again (mercifully) covering his face, surrounded by a group of scared young men. The mob mentality had faded away like mist under the rising sun.

Then Knives moved, and Tom saw what had caused the sudden change. Knives' right hand was... melting. Shifting. The fingers were elongating, spreading, becoming sharper and tangled, like thorns, like blades...

Like... knives.

Tom didn't see Knives move again. Someone blocked his view - the boy with the dead mother, George. And then everything was happening too fast and Tom felt so sick that he didn't want to think anymore... until something or someone hit the back of his head and he didn't have to think at all, because he blacked out.

The last thing that flashed across his mind was a feeling of relief.

-

Vash awoke to Michael's gentle shaking. _Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintienece_ was still splayed open across his chest, but the only thing that really registered in his awareness was the bloody handprint on his white shirt where the doctor had awoken him.

He didn't have to ask what had happened. The details didn't matter. All that mattered was the blood, the cold panic, and the desperate, sinking knowledge that he was now engaged in a duel: the first shot had been fired, and he had lost. Knives had lost.

Vash felt like screaming, but no sound came; he felt like crying, but he feared he had become as dry as the desert itself. Instead he stood up, expression hardened, and followed Michael out of the room to see what damage had been done - to see what footing could be regained, if any.

After he was gone, book lying forgotten in his chair, there was nothing left but the faint, distant sound of the Doc's heart monitor.

In the end, even that fell silent.

-  
"We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection." -Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, 1861

-  
Next Chapter: Knives begins to remember.

-  
Review Replies:

Glass Bullet: Huge thanks and foot-kissing and all manner of other worship for the ideas. I'm still struggling with how I'm going to structure the next chapter, but I think all the extra work will be worth it, and your supplement email is really helping. Since it's not a purely KxL story, the chapter won't be pure KxL either - but elements of their relationship tend to echo through the rest of Knives' life, so it all blends together in the end.

Lunis: I'm sorry you take offense to yaoi, but this story has been planned for over a year, so don't expect it to change. I'll be sure to put clear warnings wherever the yaoi aspect crops up - but in some cases, you can't really notice it unless you expect it. (In fact, chapter 8 contained quite a bit of foreshadowing to the yaoi in chapter 10, but it all depended on how the reader interpreted it.) The KxL relationship that will play a big role in chapter 10 is not one of love or tenderness; as I said to Glass Bullet above, it merely echos the rest of Knives' life and vice versa. If you find yaoi disturbing or offensive, then that should fit perfectly with the sickness of Knives' sociopathic tendencies. I'm a yaoi fan, myself, but in the case of this story, I am only using yaoi as a storytelling tool, not a centerpiece. It's not meant to be liked, just understood.

(I won't get into the issues involved with Lifeblood; granted, the science of the chapter is pretty awful even by my standards, but as for the religious aspect... I could go on for days, and as anyone who's had a religious argument with me can tell you, it's not worth anything more than a major headache.)

Just so you don't get the idea that I'm offended, I'm not! I'm extremely grateful, actually, that you expressed your opinions so civilly. You could just have easily flamed me, but you had the good grace to be sensible and thorough instead. I like and respect that in a reviewer, whether I agree with their opinions or not. And I'm glad you're enjoying the story otherwise! Rest assured that the overall story is not meant to be about religion or romance in any way, shape or form. The overarching plot all centers on the Vash/Knives dynamic, nothing more. So you're safe for the most part. :grin:

Yma: Thank you again! I know I sound like a broken record, but thanks for all your help with this chapter. It's enormously appreciated. The revisions definitely made a difference... and I think the last section works a lot better now. And because this is a review reply - your review of chapter 8 absolutely made my day when I first read it. :smile: And no, I hadn't seen the Fortunate Fall site, but after you mentioned it I went and looked it up - excellent site, I love the essays and opinions there. Ironic that I managed to echo it without knowing so, eh?

And to JRaynmaker: Honorary beta mention and a big ol' :TACKLEGLOMP:. Heh.


	10. A Heap of Broken Images

Since I said I would...  
WARNING: READ AUTHOR'S NOTE BEFORE READING THIS CHAPTER.

Author's Note: There is yaoi in this chapter - it's not really all that graphic, but I know it's not to all tastes. It may be somewhat squicky to people who aren't used to the Knives/Legato dynamic. I've said this before, but my intentions bear repeating: the yaoi is not just there for the sake of being yaoi. There is legitimate character development and symbolism in the relationship between Knives and Legato, not just mindless smut. I find their relationship morbidly fascinating and I wrote them as I imagine them, not to please anyone else.

Also, I mean no religious offense by this chapter. This is a work of fiction and does not necessarily reflect my personal beliefs. I am not Christian, but I hold Christianity and all other systems of belief in the utmost respect.

Lastly, a more technical note: readers of the manga should recognize the Angel Blade, but I felt I should clarify it for everyone else. The Angel Blade is a purely mangaverse device that is similar to the Angel Arm, just an enormous blade instead of an enormous gun. As far as I know, only Knives can create it (am I right? I haven't read that far in the manga). Since this is story is mainly animeverse, I'm writing on the assumption that Vash has never seen or heard of the Blade and that Knives doesn't use it as extensively as he does in the manga.

-  
Chapter Ten: A Heap of Broken Images  
-

"What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow  
Out of this stony rubbish? Son of man,  
You cannot say, or guess, for you know only  
A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,  
And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,  
And the dry stone no sound of water. Only  
There is shadow under this red rock,  
(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),  
And I will show you something different from either  
Your shadow at morning striding behind you  
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;  
I will show you fear in a handful of dust."  
-from The Waste Land (I: The Burial of the Dead) by T.S. Eliot  
-

Knives huddled, shaking, in an alcove in the wall that housed one of the ship's many computer terminals. The screen above his head softly announced the time on the half-hour. His shapeless gray hospital clothing was torn and bloody, his ragged hair was tangled, and his fingers... his fingers were cold. So cold. He almost couldn't feel them - he could almost believe that they weren't still tingling from... from...

The shaking increased. Knives curled closer to himself, shoving his knees against his chest until he could barely breathe. The ragged knife wound in his gut was burning, throbbing, but he didn't know enough about his own body to tell whether it had hit anything vital.

Desperate, helpless, confused and scared, Knives banged his forehead in a soft rhythm against his blood-spattered knees, held his volatile hands out away from his body, and began to cry.

It was there, bleeding and broken in the dark, that he began to remember.

-  
_  
There was a silence so loud it was deafening, and there was a darkness so thick that it got under his eyelids and tore them open, screaming open, like drowning in thick mud - the very air stuck to his skin like a leather car seat on a sweaty day. He choked on a scream and breathed in a lungful of grit instead._

And he remembered, oh he remembered, the pain wouldn't let him forget. The pain drove away consciousness, drove away rationality, drove away hope, but it left the memories gruesome and intact. He remembered the look on his brother's face, and the terrible calm moment when he knew, he knew, and then the trigger had been pulled and the pain had shattered him. There was a moment when he could have moved, but he didn't. There was a moment when he could have thought, but he couldn't. Too shocked to think.  
  
Pointing a gun at me. At **me.**__

He was desperate, sprawled broken and crying in the sand and unable to move, scream, think. He was desperate now, lost. Abandoned.

That was before he had anyone to turn to. That was before he had built a world for himself. That was before... before everything. Back then, all he had had run away like a ragged dust-colored ghost and left him, dead, tired, broken, bleeding in the middle of the desert.

He had been young. They had both been so young.

-

"Look at me, Legato."

"Yes, Master." Tawny eyes turned on him, blank and adoring.

"When I give you an order, do you hesitate?"

"No, Master." Vicious pleasure in those golden eyes now; the servant knew where this was going, and he liked it.

"I gave the boy an order, did I not?"

"Yes."

"He questioned my order, Legato."

"He did, Master."

Knives turned cold eyes on the cowering child, no more than thirteen or fourteen years old at most, and a scowl darkened his expression. Weak people irritated him. Ironic, of course, seeing as he liked his servants obedient. But the strong could be obedient; the weak merely collapsed under pressure, like badly made machines. The weak were servile, and didn't think for themselves. There was no mental adaptability there - the worst kind of mindset for an assassin, and certainly of no use to Knives.

"Teach him," Knives muttered, and left without another word.

The order was a gift, in a way, to Legato - the strongest, most obedient of all Knives' servants. Legato was infinitely adaptable, and yet managed to follow orders like a drone. When he was young, Legato had thirsted for something to fill the void in his life that had come of being an outcast. Knives had given him the right kind of ideas to put his inscrutable powers to good use. That drive, that ambition that Knives had planted so long ago had taken root and flourished like nothing Knives had ever known.

Legato liked teaching the new ones. Knives was willing to let him have his fun.

-

Vash learned faster, read faster, moved faster than his brother. Knives took his time, pondered, thought before he moved, looked before he leapt. Yet Vash always kept ahead of him, ignorant despite knowing things that Knives had not yet grasped, careless everywhere Knives trod with caution. Vash could fall and pick himself up in an instant; Knives chose not to fall in the first place. And still Vash progressed faster, bruised and happy, while Knives lagged and struggled to keep himself clean.

Learning English was a constant torment. Vash would be on chapter ten while Knives still picked his way delicately through chapter four. But ask either of them what the book had been about the day after they finished it, and their answers skewed to opposite ends of the scale - Vash would hardly be aware that he had read a book at all, while Knives would give a dissertation on its themes.

Time danced out of Knives' reach, taking his brother with it. His frustration with his own slowness, his own clumsiness with words, was maddening. And slowly, the resentment built.

Knives swore to catch up to Vash no matter what.

-  
_  
Maxima debetur puero reverentia._ Something Rem had said, once. Something that Knives had liked because it had been said in his defense, when he was being teased.  
_  
Maxima debetur puero reverentia_. The greatest respect is due to a child.

-

Legato was the one who found Knives, when they first met.

The young thief had watched Knives for nearly a week, following him into the open desert from Septombre, where Knives had been forced to deal with humans lest he starve. He had planned to steal the Plant's sidearm, figuring that such an unusual weapon would sell for a lot in the right circles. The child burrowed in the sand for shelter, flitting between dunes like a shadow, keeping out of sight and out of mind. Knives never knew he was there - the first sign that Legato's talents were of an unusual caliber.

And then Legato had struck one night, thinking he had pinned Knives into a deep sleep with the mental powers that even he did not understand; but Knives was, of course, much stronger than Legato had counted on. When he woke to the noise of Legato's pilfering, Knives felt sluggish and violated. He assumed the child had somehow drugged him. His first reaction was the desire to kill the boy.

Legato was nine years old - small, scrawny, underfed. His dull blue hair was long and matted, tied back with a sun-faded black string that looked like it had once been a shoelace. It didn't match his shoes; Knives assumed it was stolen. His clothes were ragged and mismatched, patched and grafted together with string. One leg of his jeans had been ripped off above the knee, so he had attached the sleeve from a long-sleeved shirt to complete it. He wore his oversized t-shirt like a tunic, tied about the waist with a length of chain and small-gauge flexible pipe. A flared, ankle-length, dust-stained skirt that had clearly been stolen instead of scrounged from a dumpster served as both cloak - he had torn it open down one side so he could keep it tied around his neck - and blanket. Humiliating, maybe, but shame was beyond a boy so deeply impoverished. It was functional, and that was what mattered.

Knives had caught him, but Legato had weaseled out of his grasp, wiry and quick as he was, and had lost Knives in the dunes.

He was the first and only human to ever escape from Knives' wrath.

They met for the second time six months later. Chance brought them both to the outskirts of Terma - Knives to "commandeer" equipment for the abandoned ship he had set up base in; Legato tracking a drug cartel-cum-slaving ring whose leader carried a hefty bounty. (Legato was a pragmatic street-drifter; he had no qualms about playing both sides of the field, as long as he got the money or the goods.)

Knives was asleep in the corner of a warehouse when Legato stumbled over him - literally. A string of quiet obscenity and a whirl of shadowed confusion had ended with Knives holding Legato aloft by the throat. As the two recognized each other, there in the darkness, a coldness came over both of them. Knives scowled and prepared to snap Legato's neck, but that was when the child did something he least expected.

Legato invaded his mind.

It was quick and ugly and unrefined, the wild flailing of a machete instead of the scalpel-precise craftsmanship that the psychic learned later in life. Knives gave a choked cry as his unguarded mind was flooded with alien emotion - fear, blinding terror, the kind of bloody, mind-shredding horror that would have rendered a normal man to a puddly mess. It took Knives a second to recognize that Legato was the source of the fear, and another to conclude that Legato was not himself afraid, but was merely trying to make Knives drop him.

Knives straightened, scowl deepening, and swatted away the onslaught as if it were an annoying insect, heightening his mental barriers. He tightened his grip on the boy's throat.

Legato's eyes widened with true fear, then. He struggled, but Knives shook him hard enough to make the vertebrae in his neck crackle ominously. The boy fell still, trembling.

Knives hesitated on the verge of murder, and spoke the first words that ever passed between them.

"Who are you, boy?"

Legato said nothing.

"When you attacked me. How can you use your mind like that?"

Nothing again.

"Tell me what you did or I'll kill you!"

Those strange golden eyes simply stared at him, baleful and sullen... resigned to death.

Knives didn't kill Legato that night. He wasn't sure why. Maybe because he'd never met anyone besides his brother who could enter his mind like that; maybe because something in those unnatural eyes had captivated him. Either way, the boy's talents spurred his imagination, and Knives knew that he couldn't kill this one. Not now, anyway. Not yet.

Wait and see. Wait and see.

Knives watched while Legato brought down the drug cartel. It was beautiful, bloody work. Only the leader and the slaves survived, the former for the bounty and the latter for a not-so-merciful freedom in the slums of Terma.

Legato never said a word throughout the operation.

When he followed Knives out of Terma, afterwards, the Plant didn't stop him. Their relationship was not something either of them questioned. After that first night in the warehouse, Legato did not try to use his mental powers on Knives again. Instead he studied Knives, as one studies the master of a craft in order to learn the craft. And eventually, Legato came to admire the master as much as he admired the craft itself.

It would be another year before Knives ever heard Legato speak.

-  
_  
"I will find a center in you.  
I will chew it up and leave.  
I will work to elevate you  
just enough to bring you down."_  
-Tool, "Sober"

-

"Legato..."

"Uhhhn... Master?"

"Do you know what your name means?"

Legato's formerly vacant expression was now bewildered, tousled blue hair hiding one narrowed, red-rimmed eye from view. "No," he gasped quietly. "It's only my name. Master."

Knives moved slowly; Legato gasped again, lithe body twining around Knives' as the Plant spoke.

"It's a musical term," Knives murmured. "Latin." A ghostly expression of pleasure flitted across his face as he thought of the dead language he had once tried to learn.

Legato made a little whimpering noise, pressing upwards against Knives' cool, sweat-sheened body.

Without warning, Knives caressed Legato's throat, hard, casually denting his windpipe. The human croaked, "I'm sorry - I'm sorry, Master, I didn't mean to... interrupt..." A tear leaked out of one eye, and he turned his face away to hide it, useless as that was. The silent beg still hovered there between them: _Go on, go on, go on, talk faster, move faster. Please. Please._

This was one of the slow times, almost gentle. Knives wanted to talk, and when Knives wanted to talk, he took his time about it. It was sheer torment to wait as each moment was dragged out, and every minor interruption was greeted with a calm, cavalier infliction of pain. Not like when Knives was angry - when Knives was angry, the pain was worse. But there was completion in the anger- fast, hard, screaming, bloody completion.

Anger was best. Anger was merely an expression of violent ecstasy, and ended quickly. This talkativeness, almost friendliness, was second-best; it dragged, but Knives was Master, and Master always said interesting things, always.

The worst were the playful times. The times when Master wanted something that he didn't know how to ask for. The times when Master reasserted his power, his ownership, his pure strength and terrible beauty. The times when Master was God.

Legato bit his lip with a desperate conviction not to speak.

"Look at me," Knives said, tugging at Legato's hair to make him turn his head. Legato met the cold blue eyes, clouded as they were with memory and formless passion.

"My name," Legato murmured, quietly reminding. "Latin."

Knives nodded, one hand drifting across Legato's bare chest, not quite touching. Legato bit back a hiss and fought the mindless urge to touch himself.

"A legato passage," Knives whispered, ghosting slender fingers down the human's sides, where dark violet bruises were already starting to bloom in the pale flesh. "Unbroken melody. Smooth, even notes. Classical. Delicate."

Legato struggled to formulate a response, but was too desperate to think clearly. Want was the only thing his mind had room for - want, need, desire, ache. The pain was almost unbearable.

"I like the way you contradict, Legato," said Knives, flashing a sudden, predatory smile that made Legato shiver. "You break so easily."

Then he was moving again, smooth and fast; but moving the wrong way, touching nothing of consequence. Within moments he was trembling with controlled release, completing himself but not Legato. With a few harsh, gasping breaths he regained his composure - and moved away. Legato couldn't help it; he let out a half-sobbing groan, the sudden emptiness rending him more thoroughly than any blade. "No," he gasped, "please... please, Master..."

"Don't whine," Master snapped. With a few deft movements his perfect body was once again hidden by the familiar red-and-white bodysuit.

Then he was gone.

Not for the first time, Legato felt used. Violated. Low.

Human.

-

_"Serve the Lord with fear, and rejoice with trembling."  
-the Bible, King James version, Psalm 2:11_

-

The first time had been the worst. It was the first time Master had proven his ownership, the first time he had marked Legato. There was a kind of demented playfulness in the way Master dissected, sliding transformed hands across the human man's skin, parting the muscle and mapping the ligaments and sinew that held him together, crystalline droplets of blood writing spidery poetry across the organic blades. His fingers were so sharp that the cuts themselves were completely painless. That in itself was the most frightening thing - that Master could not only take apart his body, but disconnect it from his mind as well.

It was not love. Legato wished that he could pretend that Master was showing him the deepest level of trust and compassion, but he knew better. Master was God, and gods were meant to be feared.

Legato felt sick.

-  
_  
When Knives was fourteen months old, he knew more than most human sixteen-year-olds. He applied himself to abstract mathematics and the laws of physics, and gazed longingly at the volumes upon volumes of scientific works that packed the ship's little library, none of which he could yet read._

And yet...

Despite his intelligence, despite his high ideals and complex plans, he was acutely aware that he was still a child.

-

"Hey, Knives! Look at me, watch this!"

Knives looked up from his book just in time to see his idiot brother dive ungracefully into the rec room's pool. The water was not part of the illusion - holographics were only used to make the room appear vast. The largest of the trees, the grass, and the pool were all real. And the insects, of course. Knives absently slapped away an ant that was trying to crawl up his leg.

Of course, there were drawbacks to reality.

"Owww!" Vash said as he surfaced, rubbing the stinging spot where he'd hit the surface of the pool.

"Serves you right," Knives said cheerfully. "Look before you fall."

"Didn't fall!" Vash yelled indignantly. "That was a perfect 10!"

Knives shook his head. Vash read too much about sports.

Vash splashed around, enjoying making noise, as usual. "Knives, come onnnn!" he called, laughing. "Get your nose out of that book!"

Knives shook his head absently. They were both reading T.H. White's _The Once and Future King_, and he'd be damned if he didn't finish it before Vash did.

"Fine then!" Vash was climbing out of the water again, shaking his head like a dog and flinging water everywhere. Knives instinctively bent down over the book to keep it dry. Flicking wet, tangled hair out of his face, Vash turned and prepared for another wild leap.

"Okay, watch this one! Look at me -"

-

"Look at me, Legato."

A broken, guttural cry as the blue head turned, golden eyes squinting against tears, face rendered ugly with contortions of pain. This is what humans really look like, Knives thought. This grotesque truth is what they hide behind that smiling mask.  
_  
I wonder if this is what **she** would have looked like, if I could have torn the mask off her?_

The thought of the dead woman brought out a sudden searing anger in Knives, and he took it out on the figure beneath him, its cobalt hair peppered with violet streaks where the blood had soaked in. There was a snapping sound, a scream, and the spider was hiding its face again, damn weak human that he was.  
_  
"Look at me, you worthless -"_

-  
_  
"-you worthless scum, you monster, how dare you come into this place and expect welcome! You're a freak, you-"_

-  
_  
"Is that your excuse for killing!"_

He remembered shrieking something back at Vash, hardly knowing what he was saying. He knew he was driving his brother away, but he couldn't stop himself - he couldn't help the anger that boiled in his veins, couldn't help crying out in pain at the knowledge that Vash had rejected him so completely.

The argument ended in white light and flames. The rest of the memory was nothing but a heap of broken images, too muddled and confused for Knives to follow.

-  
_  
...he was aware that he was only a child..._

-

"When I was a child  
I caught a fleeting glimpse  
Out of the corner of my eye  
I turned to look but it was gone  
I cannot put my finger on it now  
The child is grown  
The dream is gone  
And I have become  
Comfortably numb."  
-Pink Floyd, "Comfortably Numb"

-  
Next Chapter: You can never go home again.  
-

A/N Continued: I know it gets choppy at the end and that the timeline was confusing. That was intentional. This is Knives remembering; it doesn't have to make sense. It's not like memories ever stay in chronological order in your head.


	11. Degrees of Innocence

UPDATED Author's Note: Forgive me. There was some sort of... bizarre incompatibility... between FF.N and my old computer. I now have a much newer computer and have switched browsers from Internet Exploder to Mozilla Firefox, which seems to have solved the problem. If you go to my website you can find story updates through chapter 13; I'll be posting the most recent chapters on FF.N a little bit spaced apart so as not to flood anyone's mail with author alerts.

**Chapter Eleven: Degrees of Innocence**

It had been pure chance that led Michael to find the scene of destruction -- Tom hadn't come home in two days, and Michael had finally gotten so worried that he had gone to warn Milly that his little brother might be up to something. On the way to Knives' room, he'd found Milly on the floor, unconscious -- and from there on out it had been pure panic that fueled his discovery. Of all the boys, Thomas had been hurt least. The boy named Vincent, on the other hand...

Knife wounds. Lacerations that couldn't have been made by any manmade weapon -- they were finer than scalpel cuts, made with the kind of surgical precision that only doctors and assassins were capable of. In the end, every one of the boys had been incapacitated. They were in the med bay now, but for some of them, life itself was looking sketchy.

* * *

The ship was still dark when Vash found his brother, who had managed to stagger quite a way away from the hall where he'd been attacked. Knives had curled tightly around himself again, that same Sister-like fetal position that he'd adopted after his first waking. He seemed to be asleep.

Vash knelt in front of Knives' wretched, crumpled form. Hesitantly, he reached out and touched Knives' hair, feather-light, brushing the tangled locks out of his brother's face. He used the touch to open a mental link, sending a subliminal message of warm, slow calm. He didn't want Knives to panic when Vash tried to talk.

"Knives," Vash murmured, running his fingers though Knives' hair and rubbing his temple to wake him.

Knives woke at the name -- he jerked away from Vash's touch, shuddering uncontrollably, breath hitching. A sudden mental explosion of pain and confusion and rejection caused Vash's eyes to water -- Knives' reaction was stronger than he had expected. And for some reason, the main rejection was all towards Knives' own name. Vash frowned. The word "knives"? And all those knife wounds on the boys -- there had to be something here he was missing.

"Brother," Vash said instead, treading on the side of caution.

Knives calmed somewhat at that, stirring under Vash's hand. He let out a soft cross between a whimper and a moan.

"Are you hurt?" Vash asked, letting his hand move from Knives' head down to his blood-spattered side and arms.

More of a moan this time. Vash took that as a yes.

Fear threatened to rear up in Vash's gut, but he shoved it down -- he had to be calm here, calm and collected, for his brother's sake. If Knives knew the cold terror and sheer, blinding panic Vash had suffered when he found out what had happened -- well, Knives was unstable enough already.

"Look at me," Vash murmured, tugging on Knives' arms to get him to move, to uncurl.

Knives' head shot up, sick fear and confusion clouding his blue gaze, and he forcibly threw himself away from Vash's searching hands. Vash blinked, stomach lurching unpleasantly in startlement.

"Knives, what --" Vash started, forgetting himself.

"No," Knives rasped. "Get away."

The words ripped at Vash's heart like the same scalpel-blade that had shredded the children. "What?" He couldn't keep the hurt out of his voice or his mind.

But Knives seemed to recover himself, to see who he was talking to.

"Vash." His voice was rough, as if with misuse. "What... why are you..." he trailed off. His eyes betrayed the same helpless confusion that had twisted his face on the day they had split -- it was the same expression that he had borne after Vash had first shot him.

Vash gave Knives a desperate, supplicating look. "Please," he said quietly, "just let me see where you're hurt."

Finally, Knives moved. Keeping his eyes on Vash, he let his legs relax and unfold, exposing his blood-soaked abdomen. The muscles that he'd held scrunched up for so long finally stretched out again, and he made a pitiful little sound in the back of his throat, flinching at every movement.

There was a moment of uncertainty when Vash started to lift Knives' loose hospital shirt and Knives froze, his expression somewhere between nauseated and glaring. Vash sent him soothing thoughts, asked his permission, and Knives acceded... but not without a few unfamiliar flashes of thought passing across the surface of his mind. Once Vash finally got Knives' shirt off, he let out a short breath between clenched teeth and tentatively pressed a palm against the ragged wound. Knives hissed. Vash winced, but continued prodding the bloody area, keeping his touch gentle but firm.

"Muscle damage," Vash murmured finally, "but it missed anything vital. Healing won't be fun, but I don't think it'll take too long."

Knives just gave him a blank look.

"You'll live," Vash clarified shortly.

Knives nodded.

"What happened?" Vash asked, tearing off a long strip of Knives' ruined shirt.

Hesitation -- then a shrug.

Vash folded the remains of the shirt into a thick pad, pressed it against the wound, and made Knives sit up so he could tie the pad on with the strip of fabric. "The boys attacked you?"

Another hesitation, followed by a reluctant nod.

"What did you do to them?"

Knives was silent. Vash noticed that his hands were shaking.

"Never mind," Vash said, relenting. He stood and helped Knives to his feet, supporting his brother as they fell into a stumbling, uneven walk. Knives kept one hand pressed against the makeshift bandage, wincing at each twist and wrench of the ruined muscle.

"You'll have to stay in my room until we leave," Vash said finally.

Knives looked up at that, staggering as he lost his footing. A flash of angry frustration with his own clumsy body pierced his mind, and Vash couldn't help but pity him. The feeling passed, and Knives gasped, "Leave?"

"Something tells me we're not welcome here anymore," Vash said dryly, shifting the arm he had slung around Knives' shoulders to get a better grip.

Silence met that remark. Knives didn't speak again until they were standing outside the door to Vash's room.

"Why?" he asked bluntly.

The question had deeper intonations of meaning in it than Vash was prepared to think about. He left a bloody handprint on the door panel when he palmed it. Vash stared at the red stain for a second, and then said, "I don't know."

"We're different," Knives said simply. "They hate us."

Vash looked morose. "Maybe that's true."

Knives looked away, holding his tongue as Vash helped him across the room and into bed. "Milly?" he asked finally.

Vash moved off to dig for the first aid equipment he always kept with him. "She's fine. The boys knocked her out, but that's all."

"Hurt?"

"Not badly."

"She's hurt."

"Not badly," Vash repeated, coming back to the bed with his hands full of bandages and tape.

"She's one of them," Knives said plaintively. "They hurt their own?"

Vash shook his head. "She was protecting us -- you. The boys only saw her as an obstacle. Something in the way," he clarified, noticing Knives' lack of comprehension. His vocabulary wasn't quite up to par yet.

Knives started to frown, but it turned into a wince when Vash tugged off the torn shirt. Vash darted away again, into the tiny hygiene cubicle attached to the room, and came back with a wet cloth.

"I don't understand," Knives rasped softly, looking away while Vash cleaned blood off his stomach.

"No one does, Knives," Vash said, voice low, concentrating on keeping his hands occupied. Maybe Knives wouldn't notice that they were trembling. "All people are different. No one is any greater or worse than anyone else. They were scared, that's all."

"Fear made them hurt... clean... people." Knives made a face at his own words. "Not... I mean..." He hissed his frustration and reached up to grab Vash's wrist, sending a short, sharp mental impression of what he was trying to say.

"Innocent, Knives," Vash said sadly. "The word you're looking for is innocent."

The rest of the bandaging carried on in silence.

* * *

When Tom came around, the first thing he saw was Michael's hand hovering somewhere near his face. It took several slow, heavy blinks to bring the rest of his brother into focus.

"Hey," Michael said by way of greeting, keeping his voice low so as not to disturb the other two injured boys sharing Tom's room.

Tom opened his mouth to speak, but no sound came out.

Michael noticed it. "Don't bother," he said coolly. Tom blinked again and noticed how vacant Mike's expression was -- like he was pretending not to know who Tom was.

Tom worked his throat, painfully dry though it was, and finally managed to rasp, "Mike, I didn't --"

"Shut up."

Tom clenched his teeth and grated out, "At least listen to me."

"Why should I? You didn't listen to me."

Tom let his breath out in one big whoosh, as if he'd been punched. After a second of silence, he said, "I deserved that."

"Yes you did." Mike's voice was toneless. "You deserve more than that, but there are people more willing than me to give it to you. Take this as a blessing."

Ten minutes passed in silence. Tom thought about going back to sleep -- unconsciousness was safer and more comfortable, to be sure. But he didn't want to run away from this again. Not again. He'd done enough damage; he saw that now.

Mike wasn't looking at him. He was reading listlessly, elbow propped on one knee, hunched over with his nose bare inches from the pages. He was ignoring Tom completely.

"Why are you here?" Tom asked finally. "If you're that mad, why did you come?"

"I'm not mad," Mike said without looking up. "I'm here to make sure they--" he nodded at the other two comatose boys "--don't die. The nurses are spread too thin. I volunteered."

Tom hissed in a breath. "It was that bad?"

"How bad did you think it was?" Mike snapped.

"I don't know. I didn't see it all, I... I fell, got knocked out."

"Sounds like you."

Tom flushed with anger at the jibe. "I tried to stop them, dammit!" he exclaimed defensively. "I--"

"When?" Mike looked up at last, shutting his book harder than necessary. "When did you try to stop them? Before you kicked Knives in the face, or after? Before that Vince kid tried to gut him with a pocketknife? Whatever you _tried_ to do didn't stop what happened, but if you'd tried it sooner, maybe it could have. You're a fucking coward, Tom, and I'm sorry you're my brother."

Tom wanted to scream. He hid his face instead.

After a minute, a tiny, choking sob broke the dead silence. Mike looked down and saw that Tom's shoulders were shaking.

Mike sighed, relenting slightly. "But you still _are_ my brother, dammit. So just get better, will ya? And don't ever, ever scare the shit out of me like that again."

Mike went back to his book, and eventually Tom's sobs quieted.

* * *

Knives didn't realize he'd fallen asleep until he was rudely awoken by a small hand brushing against his forehead. His eyes snapped open in startlement before he had a chance to think, head lolling to the side to look at whoever was there. The intruder let out a muffled shriek and leapt away.

A young girl? Knives blinked quickly, clearing away the last fog of sleep, and stared. Definitely a girl -- not so young, maybe. Teenaged. Fifteen, sixteen. Nondescript face, nut-brown pigtails, many-pocketed apron. She looked vaguely familiar. She also looked terrified. Knives frowned.

"Who are you?" he asked. His voice was still rusty, though not quite as hoarse as it had been.

The girl trembled like a leaf. "J-Jessica Wright," she stammered. "Mr. V-Vash said you... uh... he said that someone should stay with you. A-and, er, Ms. Milly's still recovering, and Ms. Meryl has to deal with the questions, and there's the Doctor's passing for Vash to take care of and I just thought I could help andVashsaidyouneededlookingaftersir."

A long silence ensued in which Jessica stared wide-eyed at Knives and Knives tried in vain to work out what she'd said.

"Excuse me?" he said finally, giving up.

Jessica blinked. "Excuse you what?" Then she seemed to hear herself, and bit her lip nervously.

Knives shook his head a fraction. "I didn't follow that," he said bluntly.

"I... oh." Jessica blinked again, and relaxed visibly. "Um, I'm sorry?"

Knives just looked fixedly at her.

Jessica laughed nervously, tugging on one braid. "Well, that didn't go too well," she said, flashing a strained smile. "Can we start over?"

"... start over?" The thought had never really occurred to Knives -- that if something went wrong, you could just reset the board and start clean again. The thought was alarming and comforting at the same time.

"Sure," Jessica said, oblivious to the undertones of meaning her question had carried. "So, I'm Jessica. Everyone else is busy and I volunteered when Vash-san said you needed a guard. And..." She looked away, struggling with her next words. "And, um, he mentioned you could use a haircut, sir. And maybe I could help patch up your clothes." She blushed.

Knives blinked again, truly taken aback. Vash sent a human child to guard him -- and not only that, but to take care of him in ways that... well, no one ever had before. Not that he could remember, anyway.

"I..." Knives began, then stopped, bewildered by his own feelings.

"Wait," Jessica cut in quickly. Her words tumbled out in a heartfelt stream. "I just wanted to say that... that I've never liked you, sir. I'd only heard stories, but those and seeing Vash come home hurt so often gave me plenty of reason to hate you. And I've tried to hate you now, sir, I'm sorry but I have. But... I couldn't. I mean, you're... you don't know... well, I couldn't bring myself to really hate you, anyway." She looked steadily at the wall past Knives' head, unable to meet his eyes. She couldn't tell him about the way she'd watched Milly feeding him that night -- she couldn't tell him how helpless he'd been, how utterly pathetic.

She took a deep breath and went on. "But now this happened, with Vincent and the other boys, and I just wanted to say that even though I still don't like you much, I'm here to help if you need it. I don't like sand vipers either, but if a viper with no fangs crawled up bleeding on my doorstep, I'd probably help it, too." At last she met his eyes, her gaze almost defiant, as if daring him to reject her charity.

Knives let out a short breath. Humans were incomprehensible. But he thought he was grateful, maybe, if that's what this feeling of relief washing through him was called. "Thank you," he said simply, not sure what else there was to say.

Jessica's defiant look faded, and she tried out a tentative smile. "So... now that's out of the way." She took a deep breath, and made herself walk over to Knives' bedside. His steady gaze unnerved her, but she raised a hand to his forehead anyway, feeling for fever. "Are you feeling all right?" she asked.

"Yes," he said quietly. "I can't feel the cuts at all."

Jessica bit back a wince and nodded. "Vash probably used some of Doc's antibacterial ointment -- it numbs the area around the wound."

"He put something cold on it..."

"That's the stuff." She pulled Knives' blanket away so she could look over his bandages, fighting back a blush. No fresh blood had soaked through, and the wound seemed firmly closed when she prodded it through the gauze. "I guess you really are like Vash, huh?" she said softly, looking up to meet his gaze. "You both heal so quickly." Her tone carried the ache of nostalgia; Knives didn't know how to respond.

Jessica shook her head then, clearing away whatever thoughts had occupied it. "Sorry," she said quickly. "So, do you think you can sit up, maybe walk around a little? It would be good to stretch anyway, otherwise those torn muscles will get stiff."

But as Knives discovered when he tried to get up, they already _were_ stiff -- and the effects of the anesthetic goo Vash had spread on his stomach had almost completely worn off. By the time he was upright and moving, he felt like someone had run him through with a rusty railroad spike. But the wound didn't reopen, and after a few steps the pain subsided to a more reasonable ache.

Jessica, though she was at least two heads shorter than Knives, put an arm around his waist and helped him all the way around the room, not once but twice. By the time they got back around to the bed, Jessica was a lot less shy about touching the half-naked Plant. She couldn't afford to be, what with the decidedly undignified job of supporting half the weight of a man three times bigger than herself.

Knives collapsed on the edge of the bed, breathing hard but oddly satisfied. It felt good to move again, even if it hurt.

Jessica shook her sore arms out, regaining her breath. "Well!" she said. "That was educational. Next time I'm recruiting someone bigger to carry you around." She smiled -- the first real smile Knives had seen on her. It looked good. Better than the nervous laughter or the skittish defiance, anyway. He smiled back, hesitantly.

She looked him over for a moment, her gaze less restrained now, more calculating than girlish. "Vash was right," she said finally. "You really could do with a haircut."

Knives blinked and reached up automatically to touch his hair. When he tried to run his fingers through it, they got stuck in a tangle. "Hn," he grunted, frowning at the uneven ends. "Yes, probably so."

Jessica laughed at him. "I'll be right back." She darted into the tiny bathroom and emerged a minute later with a cleaning bucket full of water, a bottle of something orange and vaguely scented, a pair of towels and a comb. Setting everything but the comb down on the bedside table, she rummaged through her many apron pockets until she came up with a pair of scissors.

Knives eyed the scissors suspiciously. He wasn't sure he wanted those anywhere near his head.

"So, how do you want it?" Jessica asked obliviously, pushing all the sheets out of the way and laying a towel out behind Knives' back to keep the bed clean. "I don't know how much length I can keep in it, a lot of those knots are just gonna have to go."

Knives felt distinctly out-of-place. He couldn't remember for sure, of course, but he was fairly certain that no one had cut his hair like this before. It felt... different. Alien.

Kind of interesting, actually.

"I... I don't care," he said finally. "Short is fine."

"Good," said Jessica, and got started.

It was awkward, since Knives couldn't bend over backwards to get his hair wet and all the water they had to work with was in a single bucket. But Jessica managed, grumbling good-naturedly, trying not to yank on Knives' scalp too much when she hit a particularly vicious tangle. Eventually his hair was combed and clean, and smelled faintly of ginger.

Then came the cutting itself.

"I don't know," Jessica was saying, "I think you'd look pretty good with longer hair. Like Vash-san, his hair suits him perfectly and you both have the same face shape."

Knives frowned. "I don't want to look like Vash," he said quietly.

Jessica hesitated, reminded for a second of exactly who she was dealing with. "Oh -- okay," she said, her voice suddenly more subdued. "Um. Shorter, then." She combed out another lock, held it carefully between two fingers, and snipped off a good three inches.

After that she cut in silence, and Knives almost regretted saying anything to startle her out of her cheerful mood. The tension in the air was very mild, but after everything that had happened, even a little tension bothered him.

It felt like an eternity before Jessica huffed, ruffled his hair, combed it again, snipped one last uneven end, and walked to the other side of the room to look over her handiwork.

"It'll do," she said, scissors twitching in her hand as if she really wanted to do something else to it, but couldn't decide what. "Want to see? You'll have to get up again, the only mirror is in there." She nodded to the bathroom.

Knives hesitated, putting a hand to his stomach to feel how sore it was. Not that bad, really... it hurt, but he reminded himself that if he didn't keep moving, it would hurt a lot more. Slowly, he started levering himself off the bed, loose strands of hair detaching themselves from his bare back and littering the towel beneath him.

Jessica moved to help him, but he shook his head. "It's not far," he murmured. "I'll be fine."

But the seven or eight feet to the bathroom door sure did feel far once he got moving. He didn't realize how much of his weight Jessica had been taking until he had to support it all himself. He felt as feeble as an old man as he shuffled across the room, wincing at every step. _I could learn to hate this body,_ he thought ruefully.

Then the bathroom sink was in front of him and he fell against the industrial metal countertop, breathing hard, abdominal muscles screaming their protest. He scowled down at his skinny, battered frame, willing the pain to go away.

A few calming breaths later, he looked up, meeting his own gaze for the first time since he'd woken in the ship.  
_  
Wrong._ That was the first thought that came to mind, so vehement that he startled himself with it.  
_  
I look **wrong.**_

Of all the things he still didn't know, his own body was not one of them. He _knew_ what he should look like, and this wasn't it. Gaunt, ashen, peppered with patched scrapes and yellowing bruises. His abdomen was a mass of bandages and scars -- not like Vash, not even close to Vash, but still... he'd never had scars before. _I heal myself,_ he thought desperately. _I've **always** healed myself. I don't even have burn scars from when Vash --_

He blinked, confused. When Vash what? He'd dreamed about that argument, the one that had ended in white light, but he didn't know what had happened. Not really.

Knives gritted his teeth and forced himself to keep looking.

His hair... his hair was strange, too. It used to be shorter. He remembered it being shorter, more utilitarian, a rough self-cut style that had suited him fine for over a century. Now it was... tailored. Professionally cut, not so ragged. For some reason, that bothered him. It didn't stick up -- Jessica had left it long enough to hang down, just to where it touched the tops of his ears and brushed the base of his neck in the back. He raised one trembling hand and brushed short bangs out of the way, uncovering a sore, blue-tinged lump where some boy had kicked him in the face.

He'd never had bangs before, either.

Jessica was standing behind him, looking slightly worried at his unhappy expression. "Is it okay?" she asked tentatively.

"It'll take... getting used to," Knives muttered.

"If you don't like it, I can --"

"It's fine," Knives said shortly.

"Oh. Okay."

Then Jessica helped him back to the bed, took his bandages off and applied more of the same cold goo Vash had used earlier. The pain faded away, finally letting Knives relax. His entire body felt sore. He didn't even realize how tensely he had been holding himself.

Jessica tied off the last of the fresh gauze, then stood there in uncertain silence, torn. "I should go," she said finally. "I can get Miss Meryl or Ron or someone to take over."

Knives blinked slowly, eyelids heavy with exhaustion. "You don't have to," he said quietly. Then, after a brief hesitation, "Thank you."

Jessica tugged a braid again, smiling halfheartedly. "Oh, it's nothing really. I have two brothers and a little sister, I'm used to cutting hair and patching people up."

"Not that," Knives said, struggling to find words to express himself. "I mean... thank you for... helping. For not..."

Jessica's hand fell away from her braid and clasped the other one in front of her dress. She suddenly looked much older than her age. "I couldn't hurt someone in cold blood, Mr. Knives," she said softly. "I couldn't see a person in pain and not do something to help. I don't know how much you remember, but you used to do things like that. I hope you won't again, but..." She took a deep breath. "You're welcome for the help, and I... all I ask is that you pay it back to someone else."

Knives was taken aback. He opened his mouth to say something, but realized that there was nothing he could say.

"It's okay," she said, a little sadly. "Don't make promises you can't keep." She looked away. "I'll go get Meryl."

"Don't." The command tore out of Knives' throat before he knew what he was saying. "Stay."

Jessica looked back, surprised. She hesitated, then turned to face him. "Okay," she said softly. "Okay."

She left for a few minutes and returned with a pair of loose drawstring pants; producing thread and needle from somewhere in her apron, she began to let out the legs to accommodate Knives' lanky height. Eventually, Knives fell asleep to the sound of her faint humming.

* * *

"So, how is he?" Meryl asked, sipping her lukewarm coffee and making a face at the lack of sugar.

Vash let out a heavy breath, fell into the seat next to her, and dropped his face into his hands. "One big perforated bruise," he said, muffled.

Meryl winced. "Ouch," she muttered.

They were just outside the room where Milly was being examined by a harried nurse for her scalp wound and mild concussion. The big girl was unsteady and slightly dazed, but other than that she seemed fine. Earlier, Vash had talked to the doctors who had taken care of the gang of boys who had attacked Knives -- they were all going to live, probably, but a few would be in intensive care for over a month and one, the leader, was in the grip of a deep coma.

"I didn't want it to come to this," Vash groaned, thumping his head, hands and all, against his knees. "Dammit, I should've seen this coming. I'm losing it."

Meryl leaned forward, patting him tentatively on the shoulder. "Vash… you can't blame yourself. If you'd done anything… preemptive, that would have just made things worse. And Knives isn't dead, you aren't dead, Milly's not dead. It could have been so much worse."

"And a dead boy isn't bad enough? We're more important than him?" Vash snapped.

Meryl grimaced. "Vincent isn't dead, Vash," she said softly. "It's just a coma."

"Oh, that excuses everything," Vash muttered darkly. "Even if he ever wakes, his spinal cord's past repair. He'll never move again. That's worse than death for a worker's child like him -- he won't be able to use his hands, to do his job, to be respected."

"No one would have respected him after what he did anyway," Meryl retorted, but her heart wasn't in it.

"That's not the point," Vash all but growled -- then he heard himself, and stopped. He let the tension seep out of his shoulders, tone and expression sobering. "Sorry. I didn't mean to attack you."

Meryl ran her small hand up the back of Vash's neck and into his hair, combing through the uneven golden strands. "You should get out of here," she said softly. "Leave, with Knives. I should never have brought you both here. I should have thought --"

"Don't," Vash said, "start that. There's already enough blame flying around." He sighed, thumped his head once more, then lifted his face to gaze at the far wall. "Yeah, I'd already made plans to leave. But I can't go until everything's sorted out -- I can't run away from this." He looked down at her, his expression achingly plaintive. "I ran away after the city crashed -- didn't even help get the systems running again. Now I've made their children into murderers. They'll never forgive me if I just --"

"Do you think they would have forgiven you anyway?" Meryl asked sharply. "Vash, 'they' can handle themselves. And there are those here who want you two gone enough to risk the lives of their children to get rid of you." She bit her cheek to keep from being distracted by the bottomless pain in Vash's eyes. "I think it'll be easier on everyone," she said with cold finality, "if you're not here."

Vash opened his mouth to say something, closed it again. Finally he said, voice tight, "The Doc, Meryl. I have to see him off. I promised to stay until the end."

"The end is past, Vash," Meryl reminded him gently. "You know that. There's nothing left of him to see off except an empty body."

Vash said nothing, but there was an accusatory brightness in his eyes that tore Meryl's heart to shreds.

"We'll stay for the funeral," Meryl said calmly, keeping the pain off her face. "Milly and I. Milly can get her feet back under her -- that won't take long, the concussion wasn't serious -- and then we'll follow you and Knives, catch up to you in the desert."

"Do I get a choice?"

"None at all."

Vash looked away, lips pursed, face drawn. "All right," he murmured at last. "We'll leave tomorrow at second sunrise. East, towards Terma. Don't tell anyone the direction, just say we left. White flag. I'll ask Natalie to keep an eye out for any more trouble until you and Milly are gone."

Meryl considered arguing that she and Milly could take care of themselves, then decided that it was better to just let it go for now.

Vash stood to leave and she got up after him, drawing herself up to her full, if not terribly impressive, height.

"Vash," she said quickly, "I want you to know -- I don't like Knives. I don't like this entire situation. But this thing you're doing for him, taking care of him after everything he's done -- it's the kind of right thing that not a lot of people could ever stand to do. I know I couldn't, if I were in your shoes. And... and it's enough, Vash. It's respectable. It's worthy. _You're_ worthy." She touched his arm, standing straight and firm despite the faint blush staining her cheeks.

Vash covered her hand with his for a second, meeting her eyes. He no longer looked like the happy-go-lucky gunman whom she had refused to believe was the infamous Stampede. Now he looked like a bird with clipped wings. A dancer with no music, no stage, no fire. Now he looked like a man built for running, with nowhere left to run. The story until now had been written in stone; now the last page had been turned and suddenly there were no more words to follow.

Vash the Stampede had been spiraling down to this moment for his whole life, and now he'd reached it, and there was nothing left at the end of the spiral but empty space. Nothing left to do but fall. And Vash was afraid of that nothingness, afraid of making the wrong move, afraid of starting over, afraid of no longer being the victim, afraid of not running.

He was afraid to let go of the spiral, the pattern. Afraid to fall.

* * *

"Cynthia."

The young woman jumped and clutched the front of her dress, cheeks blotched pink with startlement. (Like most of the ship's people with no regular jobs, she had volunteered to help out in the flooded med bay.) She turned away from the sick girl she was tending to find a stocky, iron-haired woman with crossed arms staring at her.

"Oh, Natalie-sensei," said Cynthia, "it's you. Can I help you?" Her eyes flickered to the side nervously, afraid to meet those of the stern woman standing in front of her.

"It's okay," Natalie said, her expression softening slightly, "I'm not after you. Maybe you had something to do with it, maybe not. I don't like pointing fingers."

Cynthia blinked fast. "Oh," she said softly. "No, neither do I."

Natalie smiled, although her eyes remained just as hard as they had been when she walked into the room. "I'm looking for Charles McKenzie. You know where I might find him?"

"Charlie? He's around here," Cynthia replied, considerably less jittery. "The med bay, I mean. I saw him in the room where they're keeping Vincent maybe an hour ago."

"Thanks, Cynth." Natalie uncrossed her arms. "Take care." She left.

* * *

Natalie found Charlie McKenzie right where Cynthia had said -- sitting next to Vincent's bed, staring off into space and fingering his sleeve cuffs. The comatose boy was all a mass of tubes and hastily-assembled machines; they'd been out of rooms equipped for intensive care when he'd been brought in, and now no one dared move him. He looked more machine than human. The blood was gone, but Natalie could see where it had been by the strips of tape and the bruises peeking out from under heavy white bandages. The kid was a wreck. It hardly seemed like a life worth living, comatose or not.

Natalie leaned against the dented metal doorframe, crossed her arms, and gave Charlie a long, hard stare.

Eventually, he looked up. "What do you want?" he said, and there was a clipped coarseness in his voice, like he'd been swallowing back tears and bile for a long time.

Natalie shook her head. "Just wanted to see if you had anything to say for yourself."

"What makes you think this was my idea?" Charlie asked defensively, eyes narrowing.

"Didn't say it was," Natalie said shortly. "Care to correct me?"

Charlie scowled. "I had nothing to do with this. I told him to watch, to keep clear of the guy until we knew more. I didn't know he'd do this."

Natalie nodded sagely. After a beat of silence, she said, "Of course, a few words is plenty enough to keep a group of unhappy young men with a passionate leader from lashing out against what they see as their enemy."

"You're twisting it," Charlie said with the beginnings of anger. "It wasn't like that."

"Wasn't it?" Natalie asked calmly. "Tell me how it wasn't like that."

"Vince -- he was scared. Scared as the rest of us. I'd say the -- the bastard must've done something to just trigger that fear, and Vince did something rash before he could think." Charlie's tone became more self-assured as he talked. "Things like that happen, y'know. Whatever happened, it wasn't Vince's fault. Couldn't of been. I mean, Vince is _normal._ That other guy, both of them -- no telling what goes through _their_ heads."

Natalie snorted. "Doesn't take a brain surgeon to figure out what goes on in anyone's head, Mac. And Vince was normal, sure. Normal like serial killers are normal. He's just as human as me and you. I can believe he was afraid -- everyone is, now. But Knives didn't trigger it. It triggered itself, if anything. We'd been building up to this for a long time, or were you too blind to see that?"

Charlie pressed his lips into a line so thin and hard that Natalie thought one of them might split. "You can't tell me," he said coldly, "that no matter who or what started it, that -- that _creature_ didn't deserve what he got."

The air between them changed imperceptibly; the tension grew more brittle, more frigid. Natalie stepped slowly away from the door, towards Charlie. He shrank back slightly in his seat, suddenly aware of her sheer matriarchal power.

"None of it matters now," Natalie said in a low, dangerous tone. "It's done and past. But let me tell you one thing, Charles Evan McKenzie. You will find no work or respect on this ship if you choose to stay. I can raise a glass ceiling over you so thick that an atomic bomb couldn't break it. So maybe you better start thinking about the desert you've just exiled 'those creatures' to, because unless you want to spend the rest of your life as scum on the bottom of my shoe, you'll be out there joining them."

Charlie shot up out of his seat, red-hot with anger and indignity. "How dare you!" he said in a half-choked cry. "You can't talk to me like that! My family goes back to the Fall, dammit, back to Earth -- we helped pilot this piece of junk! How _dare_ you try to banish me from my own ship!"

Natalie gave him a level, expressionless stare and said, "This ship belongs to no one. This ship is a good home and it's served its life well. Now it's become a casualty of time, and we are planetside people whether we admit it or not. It will be no different out there from in here. Your family has no legacy anymore."

Charlie was deflating now, desperate and even more angry because of that desperation. "Slander my family name all you want, bitch," he hissed, "but you can't put me out of a job. I've been heading the mech crew for over thirty-five years. I'm a big name around here, and you know it. You've got nothing on me."

"I've got the lives of twelve mutilated children on you," Natalie replied calmly. "And that's more than enough to ruin the greatest of names."

"You--" Charlie began, pointing a gnarled finger at her. Natalie saw that there were tear tracks streaking his red face now, although he didn't seem to have noticed.

"'I' nothin'," Natalie said sharply. "This conversation's over, Mac. I've said everything I came to say. You can stay and find out exactly how low I can bring you, or you can take my word for it and leave now. That town we crashed near, New Oregon -- I've been out there coupla times. It's no so bad once you get used to it."

"You can't make me leave," Charlie said one last time.

"Watch me," Natalie replied, and shut the door in his face on her way out.

* * *

First sunrise the next morning found Michael knocking as quietly as he could at Vash's door, not wanting to wake the gunman if he was still sleeping. Meryl had told him the twins were leaving, but Michael was still a little disbelieving that they'd run off so quickly, especially with Knives' injuries.

"Come on in, lock code's off."

The young doctor was a little startled to hear Vash's voice answer his timid knock. He palmed the door panel and discovered that the lock was, indeed, turned off -- although he couldn't imagine why Vash would be so trusting so soon.

The door slid open, and Michael stepped inside warily, noting that the room's single bed was empty and made, and that Vash was sitting on the other side of the room in the chair usually occupied by Meryl or Jessica. Vash gestured absently for him to close the door with one hand; the other was busy buckling and snapping his leather arm-sheath on. He was wearing his usual off-white shirt and loose, faded jeans, but the lower part of the jeans were covered up by tall, heavy boots. Traveling boots.

They looked strange without the coat to go with them.

"Going out?" Michael ventured to ask, when Vash made no further move to acknowledge his existence. The doctor scanned the room surreptitiously -- a beaten old duffel bag was lying half-full on the bed, and a small mound of bullets had been dumped unceremoniously on the table next to the chair where Vash sat. Even as he watched, Vash flexed his newly-gloved fingers, unfolded the hidden machine gun in a flash, pried open a panel on the top, and started loading his arm.

"You could say that," Vash said distractedly, snapping bullets into place with the kind of practiced efficiency that made Michael wonder how many times he'd done the exact same thing before.

A few moments passed in dead silence, the only sounds those of metal scraping metal and the hygiene cubicle running on low. "You shouldn't," Michael said finally, folding his hands behind his back and donning the air of an intervention. "I know what happened hurt you more than anyone, but running is no way to solve --"

Vash looked up sharply at that. "Me?" he asked, and his tone was more cold than Michael had ever heard it. Sea-green eyes leveled with the doctor's dark brown. "You think _I_ was hurt worst? I'm the sensitive one, right, the sweet and compassionate one, so obviously _I_ got hurt worse than the actual victim."

Michael caved under Vash's relentless stare, averting his eyes. He hadn't really thought that... well, that was, Vash's brother was just so... so...

Vash looked away, freeing Michael from his hard gaze. "Don't ever assume evil exists just to make black easier to tell apart from white," he murmured, staring at the far wall vacantly. "Don't ever assume that misled ideals are any less pure. And don't _ever_ think that my brother is incapable of feeling. They hurt _him,_ not me."

"But you..." Michael offered weakly, waving one hand in a helpless gesture.

Vash flipped the panel closed on his arm, retracting the machine gun into the depths of the prosthetic shell. He didn't look at Michael when he stood up and started packing a last few little throwaway items into his duffel.

Just then, the background humming from the hygiene cubicle stopped, and the door slid open. Michael's heart skipped a beat, cold sweat threatening to pop out on his forehead. He wiped his upper lip nervously, staring at the man who had just emerged from the room's tiny bathroom.

Still beaten, yes, but healing fast; the minor cuts and bruises all over his body had all but vanished. His stomach wound was slowing him down and obviously caused him a great deal of pain, but he walked upright anyway, keeping the hurt to himself. He had one towel wrapped firmly high around his waist, and was drying his short hair with another. Michael's eyes were drawn helplessly to the perfect, tiny craters in his shoulders and chest -- gunshot scars. A tiny handful of markings, a mere spattering of history compared to the entire timeline carved into Vash's flesh -- but still, they were there, and they screamed of the total dysfunction and utter _wrongness_ of this twisted little family.

Knives turned to look at Michael, and for a second time seemed to stand still. Michael was afraid to move, breathe, think, exist. Those eyes were still uncomprehending... still so cold, despite Vash's assurance that Knives remembered nothing of who he once was.

"Vash," Knives said quietly, turning his pale blue gaze away from the doctor to look towards his brother. Michael let out a deep breath, shoving his hands in his pockets to stop them from shaking.

Vash moved to the end of the bed and picked up a stack of clothes and a roll of gauze and tape that Michael hadn't noticed before. He gave Michael the barest of glances before motioning to his brother to come closer. "Stand still," he murmured, leaving the clothes close at hand and taking the end of the gauze in his teeth to pull it free of the roll.

Michael watched in stunned bewilderment as Vash gently rebandaged his brother's abdomen, pausing to remove medical tape from the healed cuts and replacing it on the gashes that were coming loose. He bound the white strips more tightly than was comfortable in some places, adjusting for what little stretching the gauze would do while walking. Knives winced, but said nothing.

Tying off the last loose end, Vash patted Knives on the shoulder (mindful not to jar anything painful). "All done," he said, tossing Knives the stack of clothes so he could get dressed. Knives nodded in acknowledgement.

Michael finally found his voice again. "Vash --" he began.

Vash waved a hand to silence him. "I'm taking him away from here," he said firmly, shoving the leftover bandages into his bag and cinching it closed. "It was wrong of us come here in the first place. I had no right to impose on you."

The way he said _you,_ as if he didn't consider himself part of the ship's family anymore, made Michael's heart sink. That lack of possession in his wording, that distance in his tone... Vash was slipping away from them again, and this time Michael didn't think he would come back.

Knives finished fumbling with the last few buttons on his off-white shirt. His clothes mostly matched Vash's except for his pants, which had a drawstring waist so that they would be easy to get on and off and wouldn't cut into his injuries when he moved.

"What about the girls?" Michael asked.

Vash lifted his heavy duffel easily in one hand and swung it over his shoulder, where it thumped against his back. "Let them sleep," he said, walking over to Michael and laying a hand on his shoulder. "When they wake up, tell them we've gone."

"But --"

"They'll follow us eventually," Vash said. "Don't worry about it. They'll tell you everything."

"Vash, I didn't want it to be like this," Michael blurted, wringing his hands wretchedly. "You were always one of us, family -- everyone tried to accept things as they were, but --"

Vash's hand squeezed his shoulder for a split-second before letting go. "It's too late for that," he said. "Drop it."

Michael could think of nothing else to say. Vash helped Knives with one last elusive button on his shirt, and then the brothers were off, leaving the ship for good. Knives was still limping severely, so Vash put an arm around his back for support. Hunched under the weight of the duffel and his brother, Vash looked just like all the old pictures of Atlas, the ancient Greek who carried the world on his shoulders.

Michael followed them outside, trailing a few feet behind, forever too far away to hold them back. He stopped at the outer doorway and watched them move further and further away, out onto the cool early-morning sands. Vash murmured something into Knives' ear, and they turned around a few dozen yards from the ship, squinting into the rising suns and waving at anyone who might be looking. Knives' wave was programmed, unfeeling; but Vash's wave was a true goodbye... maybe a final goodbye.

Only Michael saw them. He waved back, but with the glare of the suns behind him, he was sure they couldn't see.

* * *

Next Chapter: Brief scenes from the twins' childhood.

* * *

Review Replies:

Glass Bullet: Thank you! And good luck in putting yourself back together, as you say. I'll be looking forward to your return to ficcing.

Lindsey: Your review seems to have gotten cut off. FF.N's been having issues with that lately, just thought I'd mention it...

Jaina: Heh. I wrote that line several months ago; it's been waiting for just the right moment to sneak into a fic. I'm glad it worked here.

Yma: Yay! So glad you liked it, as usual. :grin: I wanted Legato's story to be different, but I wasn't sure how I was going to go about it. So when I sat down to write, I really had nothing in mind past the fact that Knives picked Legato up as a small child. The way they behaved on the page from there on out was entirely spontaneous, and I think it worked really well. Also, I'm a big-time yaoi fan, but I'm with you in that if it doesn't contribute to plot or characterization, it's not all that interesting. I'd rather have plot before pairing. It's good to hear that I managed to keep my priorities straight in the course of the chapter.

Little things you picked up on - Steve's brief line at the end, the two-line Latin tag (which is actually the basis for a big chunk of chpt. 12), and the staggered ending - absolutely made my day when I read your review. Thanks again, and looking forward to more Eden's Children:bounce:

Lunis: Handshake and make up now:grin: Sorry you were subjected to yaoi for the sake of a fic, but I'm glad it wasn't too bad. And isn't poor Knives the most huggable amnesiac psychopath ever? That's part of why I wanted to write him like this -- sympathy for the devil, as it were. But the whole reason the yaoi and other squickyness is in there is so you don't get too comfortable with him! He used to be the bad guy, after all, and he hasn't _completely_ forgotten... :evil grin:


	12. Sleeping in Light

A/N: Ugh, so long since last update. Sorry doesn't begin to cover it. FF.N is evil, it just kicked me off right after I'd finished formatting the chapter, so now it's two hours later and, I repeat, UGH.

This chapter is just sort of a melting pot of a bunch of ideas I'd had over the months that didn't quite develop into their own stories or chapters. This is not Knives remembering, as chapter 10 was. This is just a collection of scenes and backstory from the twins' childhood. Partly I wanted to provide some setup for future references, like the fact that Knives speaks Latin and Vash speaks French; partly I wanted to explore some simple questions (i.e. why did Vash follow Knives even after taking a brutal beating and an act of ultimate betrayal from him?) that I didn't think the anime answered adequately. Not the most cohesive chapter and horribly depressing (at least it was depressing to write), but it gets the job done. Next chapter: return of the real plot!

All italicized quotes and the one italicized segment are taken directly from episode 17 of the anime, "Rem Saverem."

* * *

**Chapter Twelve: Sleeping in Light**

"Try again."

Knives carefully sounded out each word. "Mens... agitat... molen. No, molem. Is that it?"

"You really are as quick as Rem keeps saying, huh?" Mary smiled and ruffled Knives' long hair. He made an indignant little sound and pulled away, but he couldn't completely hide his grin of pleasure at the praise.

"What does it mean?" he asked, looking up at Mary's round, practical face. She wasn't so silly as Rem, and she didn't like to play games with the two young boys, but her plain sensibility was part of why Knives liked her. Vash couldn't see past his dreams, but Knives liked to keep things in perspective.

Mary smiled, her red hair flaming with streaks of color as she turned her head to face him. The synthesized sunlight suited her well. "It means 'mind moves matter.' A man named Virgil said it."

"Did you know him?" Knives asked innocently.

Mary laughed so loudly and suddenly that Knives was taken aback. He knew he'd said something wrong -- the laugh had that slightly condescending hint to it that always cropped up when he or Vash said something ignorant. Knives didn't like it. He didn't like being thought childish and stupid by the others on the ship. A scowl tugged at his mouth, but Mary didn't notice.

"Oh no!" Mary was saying, still quivering with pent-up laughter. "No, Virgil was a very old philosopher, Knives. Centuries before my time. Centuries are --"

"Hundreds of years, I know," Knives interrupted shortly, unhappy with the turn in the conversation. Latin fascinated him, and Mary was a good teacher, but it was moments like this when he wished he was a good enough reader to learn Latin on his own.

"Of course you know." Mary ruffled his hair again, but when Knives pulled away this time, it wasn't with a hidden smile. "I'm sorry, Master Knives. I shouldn't question your superior intellect." She mock-bowed, a good trick to pull off while sitting down.

Knives would have said something damaging, then, but the door to the rec room slid open and Rem stepped in.

"Mary, there you are!" Rem called. "Joey needs an extra brain cell or two with the sleepers' programming, but Rowan's asleep and Steve's doing maintenance. And Knives, don't you think it's about time for lunch?"

Knives grumbled something incomprehensible about being busy.

"Young Master Knives here was just learning Latin," Mary grinned. "Virgil. Say, Rem, you never knew him, did you?"

Rem's eyes twinkled with amusement, taking Knives' hunched posture to mean that he had had a bad moment. "_Maxima debetur puero reverentia,_ Mary. The greatest respect is due to a child. Juvenal said that."

Mary smiled again and laughed, but the laugh was shorter and had less unpleasant baggage in it. Knives felt his anger drain away, and a flash of gratitude towards Rem.

Mary went to find Joey and left Knives the book they'd been reading from -- it wasn't really a book, Knives thought, just a collection of quotes and things in Latin, but it was good enough for now. When he knew more, he'd get Rem to let him in the little library. And she'd said there would be more books after they found somewhere to land -- that there was a bigger library close by, but that she couldn't get to it unless they were on solid ground. He didn't know about the rest of the fleet yet.

When they were alone, Rem smiled down at Knives and said, "Do you like reading, Knives?"

Isn't it obvious? Knives thought. Is it really this hard for adults to reason out what other people like and dislike? Knives thought over the question, and decided that Rem was just trying to make conversation. That was all right; slow and childish, but all right enough. "Yes," he said in clipped tones, "books are worth learning from. I like them."

"That's good," Rem said. She held out her hand, and he took it. "I have a few books of my own, not from the library, that you might like."

Knives nodded, smiled a little. "I'd like to read them when I can."

"What are you reading now?" Rem asked, leading them out of the rec room and towards the galley.

"Dickens. A Tale of Two Cities."

"Oh, that's a good one," Rem said, smiling fondly at some distant memory, "a very good one. Where are you?"

"Chapter five..." Knives muttered, knowing and hating that Vash was on chapter nine. He didn't say that, though. Only Mary knew that Knives was a slower reader than Vash, since she was the only one teaching them to read. She assured him that reading slower was a sign of deeper comprehension, but it still bothered him that Vash could understand words before him.

"If Mary's moved on to Latin, you must have your English, hum?"

Knives nodded. "Mostly. There are a lot of words I still don't know."

"Well, that's what the reading is for," Rem said. "You can't know everything to start with." She leaned down conspiratorially and whispered, "You know what? When I'm reading, I find words I don't know, too."  
_  
Then you haven't learned properly,_ Knives thought automatically, then shook the thought away. Rem might have a smaller brain capacity than he and his brother, but he believed her when she said that she didn't know every word in the English language. It would probably be impossible to learn them all.

"Why does English have to be complicated?" Knives asked, half to himself. "French isn't so complicated. French makes _sense._"_ Too bad it only suits my romantic sap of a brother,_ he added silently.

"Welcome to the fold of all English students over the course of history," Rem laughed. "It's a ridiculous language. Did Mary tell you how it came to be like it is today?"

Knives shook his head.

"Back on Earth," Rem explained, "there were hundreds of different countries and races of people, all of whom spoke different languages. Latin was spoken mainly in the Roman Empire and was considered the scholar's language. Sometimes -- actually, most of the time -- different races and nations would trade with each other, or try to take over each other's land. That's when people would mingle, learn words from each other, and their languages would adapt to fit the new words. Cultures sort of nibbled at each other's edges, as it were. English was the greatest of all the mix-and-match languages -- there are almost no English words that are really pure English. Most of them are German, or French, or Dutch, or Native American. There's almost no other language on Earth that English hasn't stolen from. It's one of the greatest pinnacles of racial mixing -- a symbol of the harmony that can be achieved when different people came together."

"It's still a ridiculous language, though," Knives muttered.

Rem chuckled. "That it is. It isn't particularly pretty, but it has meaning, and that's why when the nations of Earth finally united, they chose English as the official international language of peace. The only bad side effect of that was that a lot of other languages died out -- there's almost nothing left of the old African tongues. And all the Oriental languages became so modernized that they lost a lot of the flow and cadence that made them beautiful. Mandarin Chinese used to be lilting, sing-song. Different notes gave words different meanings -- it was like music. No one speaks it anymore. I only heard recordings while I was at academy." She looked partly sorrowful and partly disappointed.

Knives wasn't sure what to say to that. I'm sorry you killed your planet? Things change, don't worry about it? Personally, he thought it rather efficient of Earth to pick one language and ditch the others, but then again, Knives thought natural disasters sounded like a fairly clean and painless way to help control overpopulation.

They had reached the galley. Knives could barely see Vash through the fiberglass window in the door, which was just at his eye level. The zanier twin seemed to be making a mess of something, as usual. Knives looked up at Rem again, and caught a glimpse of her distant, wistful expression before she reorganized her face into a bright smile.

"I'll stop boring you to tears," she said cheerfully. "It's time for lunch, anyway. You can help me peel Vash off the ceiling, yeah?"

Knives smiled back, but the expression was just as orchestrated as Rem's. "Yeah," he said, and looked away from her smiling mask.

_

* * *

"Do you think I'll be eaten someday?"_

_"Of course not! They're making a different kind of Eden."

* * *

_

"Hey, Joey..."

"Yes, Vash?"

"Why does it get so dark on the ship all the time? I mean, not all the time, but every twelve hours, even when people aren't sleeping."

Joey set down his coffee mug and gave Vash an amused look. "You mean ships' night? That's a silly question, Vash. Of course the lights go off at night."

"Rem says there's no such thing as a silly question." Vash fiddled with the cat toy Rem had given him, squeezing it around the middle to hear its tinny mechanical _meow. _He looked up into Joey's stern face with a disarming, gap-toothed grin.

Joey sighed and rolled his eyes, once again defeated by the dark-haired woman's teachings. "Okay, Vash, okay. Now why exactly do you find it strange that the lights go off at night?"

Vash shrugged and went back to playing with his toy. "Dunno," he said evasively. "Just seems weird. It's always dark _outside_, anyway."

Joey leaned down to face the young boy, planting elbows on knees with a groan. "Well, outside it's just empty space. It's a vacuum; there's no light or heat or air in a vacuum."

Vash made a superior noise in his throat. "Well I know _that,"_ he said in that huffy voice that only little kids can manage.

"Of course," Joey improvised, "it was just a reminder. So the only reason it's always dark outside is because it's a vacuum. But on a planet, it's different. Earth, our old home, revolved around a star -- just like the ones you see outside every day. Half of the planet would always be facing the sun and the other half would be in shadow. Because of the way Earth turned, all of the surface received both sunlight and shadow, usually in cycles of twelve hours. Humans learned to sleep at night, when they couldn't see very well, and work during the day when they could get energy and light and hope from the sun."

Vash had a dubious expression. "We're on a ship," he said bluntly, "not a planet."

Joey counted to ten silently and wondered, not for the first time, how Rem managed it. "I know," he said exasperatedly, "but we're still human. We think of darkness -- nighttime -- as the time to sleep and replenish our energy, and we work better and feel more awake in daylight. So the ships are programmed to follow lighting schedules that simulate night and day on Earth. It makes us more comfortable. Besides, the habit is too deeply ingrained. Do you sleep better in the dark or the light?"

Vash looked down and mumbled, "Dark."

Joey sat up and took a triumphant sip of coffee. "So there you are, that's why the lights go on and off." He turned back to his console and resumed whatever inscrutable grownup work he'd been doing when Vash had interrupted.

The young boy huddled on the floor, absorbed in contemplation of Joey's words, twisting the stuffed cat's tail between small fingers. The concept of night was still a new one, as were the concepts of vastness and heaven; things Rem had talked about fondly, but things which Vash found more alarming than he dared admit.

After a good ten minutes, Vash's timid voice once more broke the silence.

"Joey?"

A sigh. "Yes, Vash?"

"Why is the dark so... I dunno. Still?"

"It's still at night because everyone's asleep."

"But Mary or Rowan is always on night watch in command, and Steve stays up real late a lot. It's so still when it's dark, even when people are awake. I... I don't like it."

Joey chuckled and looked down at the bright blonde head. "Vash, are you trying to tell me you're afraid of the dark?"

Vash made a face in denial.

Joey laughed. "It's all right to admit it, Vash. A lot of people are afraid of the dark when they're young. You'll get over it as you grow up."

"But why?" Vash insisted. "Why does darkness scare people?"

Joey turned away, shrugged off the question. "I don't know, Vash," he said wearily. "I really have work to do. Why don't you ask Rem? She always has answers."

"Yeah," Vash mumbled. "She does."

"Well, go find her then. Maybe you can find Knives, too, and go play somewhere."

"Sure." Vash scrambled to his feet, clutching his little cat, and wandered off. "Thanks, Joey," he called over his shoulder.

Joey waved back without looking.

* * *

Vash didn't ask Rem anything. He didn't even look for her. 

He thought about finding Knives, but somehow he didn't think his brother could make him feel any better. Knives had been getting strange lately. It wasn't anything he said or did... it was just a feeling, a slight note of discord Vash sensed from him.

A few hours later found him taking refuge in the Sisters' room, looking small and insignificant against the graceful bulk of their bulbs. His bare feet dangled high in the air; he rocked back and forth on his precarious catwalk seat without a second thought to the danger.

Suddenly, all the lights went out.  
_  
Ships' night,_ Vash reminded himself, looking around nervously. _I wonder if Rem is looking for me?_

But he didn't want to go back, not just yet. He sent a silent apology to Rem and pulled his legs up, hunching over into a little cross-legged ball, shielding himself from the dark.

And then he asked his Sisters why he was afraid.

They had no concept of fear. He tried to explain; they did not understand. Darkness? Darkness, to them, was the absence of something so essential that they could not comprehend existence without it.

Vash submerged his consciousness further and further into theirs in a desperate attempt to convey his question, but they rejected his feelings of fear and his images of darkness as things that could not possibly exist.  
_  
Light is our form and our being,_ they murmured in his ear, in his mind. _Light and this essence of ourselves we call our soul are one and the same. There is no reality but the light._  
_  
But you die,_ Vash thought. _You can die. You aren't one being; you're all individuals, separated by your bulbs. Each of your lights is different. There is darkness between you. Aren't you afraid of the dark?_

Again, there was a complete lack of comprehension. _We are only one. We are parts of the only whole. When a body passes out of the light, out of the web of consciousness, it ceases to exist. There is no absence of light. There can be no absence of reality. Why else would we exist? How else could we exist?_

And so it went on, endless questioning with no answers, no possible hope of answers. The rift in understanding between Vash and his siblings was simply too vast.

There in the darkness that his Sisters insisted was not real, Vash nodded off to sleep, lulled by the soft light of the sleeping giants.

_

* * *

"It's weird. Nothing's actually moved around, but every time we come here this place seems different for some reason." Knives picked a blade of grass and twirled it between nimble fingers._

_"That's because it's alive!" Rem declared cheerfully._

_Knives blinked. "Huh?"_

_"Can't you feel it?" Rem asked, running her hands lovingly through the downy green of the rec room's floor. "It has its own rhythm... you can actually feel the living heartbeat of the plants --"_

_Mary rolled her eyes and flopped backwards. "Oh boy, there she goes thinking about home again."_

_Knives looked out at the holographic valley with its false river, sipping his cocoa. "So this looks like the world you and the others keep talking about."_

_Rem shrugged. "Sort of. But the scenery at home was actually much more expansive, with a lot more variety of plants and animals."_

_"I'd like to see that, Rem!" Vash cut in, gazing up adoringly at his idol._

_Rem laughed. "We're not just going to see it, we're going to create it! We'll find a place to create our new home. And when we get there..."_

* * *

Destruction flew left and right, a frenzied mesh of red clouds and shrapnel and screaming faces passing from slumber straight into death.  
_  
"There will be nothing but peaceful days."_

Sublimation; the act of changing from solid to gas without passing through the liquid state between.  
_  
"With no war!"_

Some ships vaporized instantly, sublimated, without so much as a breath of air to mark their passing.  
_  
"And no stealing."_

The flames from a crashed vessel hundreds of miles away leapt so high that the horizon glowed with an unearthly red light.  
_  
"An Eden where people can live in freedom and harmony..."  
_  
Night fell on the planet.

* * *

Vash knelt in the dust, scared and lonely, touching the lumps and bruises from where Knives' booted foot had gotten rather intimate with his face. He didn't understand his brother's actions; he didn't understand the magnitude of his own life, of the catastrophe surrounding him, of what this meant for the future of mankind. He stared around him and he saw dunes and cliffs and sand, red-tainted sand stretching for miles and miles around, and the vastness of the sand and the horizon and the sky itself were more than he could stand. He cowered against the ground, shivering. 

"Nothing like the rec room," he mumbled to himself, taking comfort in the sound of his own voice. "Nothing at all like the rec room. Rem..."

Tears plowed streaks through the dust on his cheeks, stinging against the bruises there, but he hardly even noticed.

From the top of the nearest dune, the diminished figure of Vash's brother turned around and called out one last time for Vash to follow him.

Vash hesitated as the throbbing pain of the injuries Knives had inflicted flared up. But then he looked up at the stars and the darkness, and the old fear came rushing back. He half-ran, half-limped to catch up with his brother.

"Isn't this great?" Knives laughed as Vash neared him, flinging his arms out wide. "It's huge! Nothing like the rec room, huh, Vashu?"

Vash winced at the eerie echo of his own words. "I hate it," he grated out. "Let's find somewhere to sleep, Knives, please? I'm tired and I hurt."

"Sorry about that," said Knives, not sounding sorry at all. He looked around at the wide-open landscape. "Well, we'll have to get the lay of the land before we can find shelter. But I want to watch the ships fall. They're gorgeous, aren't they? Just like falling stars."

"Knives..." Vash pleaded, feeling sick just listening to his brother's heartless words.

"Oh c'mon, it won't hurt you to sleep in the open for once," Knives said, oblivious to Vash's pain.

"I'm scared, Knives," Vash said wretchedly. "I don't like the open. I don't like the dark."

Knives sneered. "Stop being such a baby. Fine, we'll find a cliff or something to rest by."

They set off in search of a suitable rock face from which to watch the show of falling stars. Vash lagged behind his brother, a small, miserable shape against the endless crimson horizon. When they had settled under the leeward face of an overhanging cliff, Vash ignored Knives' attempts at small talk and curled up against the rough stone, hiding his face and trying without success to block out the world around him.

The last thing Vash saw during his first experience of true night was his brother, face upturned to the burning sky, basking in the glow of his handiwork. And Vash realized, at long last, that he and his brother truly were of the same race as the Sisters -- they were one, yet separate; they were giants, great and terrible, yet their power laid dormant and docile.

Until now.

* * *

"How small a thing is man and how large the dark." -- Alfred, _Alfred the Great_ (1969 movie)

* * *

Review Replies: 

Glass Bullet: I inspire re-readings? I feel so special. :) Thanks for reviewing even though you didn't have to!

Lunis: Yay, glad you like it! I love writing the interaction between Vash and Knives. Ever since I saw the anime I've wanted to see a good normal, sit-down, civilized conversation between the two of them. Of course with the way they are in the anime and manga, they can hardly get two sentences out before one or the other starts shouting or shooting. So, the amnesia was actually partly a selfish plot device to make Knives docile enough for him and Vash to talk like normal human bei... er... not-human-beings. Oh yes, and Knives is beginning to remember things... the psychopath we know and love is not gone forever.

peridot3783: Hi, glad you like it! I'm flattered that you like the language so much - I love wordcrafting almost as much as I like telling a story. Sorry to disappoint, but there will be no V/M. They're friends and... colleagues of a sort, I guess you could say. But EtE probably won't have any sort of romantic aspect to it and the only major sexual relationship in the whole thing is KxL, which is only referred to in flashback or conversation and was never meant to be romantic. But don't worry, Meryl _is_ going to have a strong role, taking up Vash's slack as his will starts to fade -- they'll be together, just not together-together.

* * *

NOTICE TO ALL READERS: The alternating-chapter style is going to become more random from now on. I'm running out of in-betweener ideas and I want the plot to move faster. I doubt anyone can complain about more plot, I just though I'd warn y'all that changes are afoot. 


	13. Lies My Teacher Told Me

Author's Note: Ack, after weeks upon weeks of wrestling with that brain-seizing blockage monster we all know and hate, I've managed to get well into chapter 14 and therefore feel safe in posting 13 here. It's long, leisurely, and involves a major change in setting. Chapter title credit goes to an excellent book called _Lies My Teacher Told Me: Everything Your American History Textbook Got Wrong_, by Professor James Loewen.

So. Enjoy.

**Chapter Thirteen: Lies My Teacher Told Me**  
--------

"You're obviously going after Knives -- what do you intend to do once you find him?"

"Many years ago he stole someone who was very important to me."

"So you want revenge."

"I don't know. I really don't know."

Vash and Wolfwood, episode 23, "Paradise"  
---------

On the first day, there was silence.

By unspoken agreement the twins left the rickety Jeep behind for the girls. Knives hadn't said anything, but Vash knew his brother was in desperate need of exercise. A month lying in bed wounded had done absolutely nothing for him except give him more time to think than could possibly be healthy. Knives' body was wasted, his muscles starting to atrophy, strength starting to dwindle. _A neglected plant withering in the dark, _Vash thought.

So they left the Jeep behind and set out on foot, spending their first hour away from shelter in a comfortable, all-encompassing silence. The suns weren't yet high enough to be painfully hot, and the bare whisper of a breeze wasn't strong enough to throw dust in their faces. All tension and hurt was carefully put aside as they trudged through the sands, eyes on the horizon.

But after a while Knives' limp got more pronounced and his breath became more ragged, and the solemn beauty of the morning cracked a little more with every staggering step he took. Vash wordlessly took his brother's pack and shouldered it next to his own. He'd given Knives all the light things; it wasn't much of a burden, but things got heavier when you were in pain. And for a little while, losing the extra weight seemed to work -- Knives walked easier and limped less when he didn't have to carry anything.

That particular solution only lasted a little over an hour. At just past noon, when the suns were high and hot and sweat was starting to make Vash's shirt stick to his sides, Knives collapsed onto one knee in the sand. His breathing was ragged and uneven.

New Oregon was only a few shallow dunes away, but Vash didn't want to push his brother too far at once, and more than anything he didn't want Knives to associate his first taste of planetside human society with the pain of a reopened wound.

The surrounding land was fairly stony; the bedrock here protected the area from sandworms and made it impossible for vipers to build dens, making it an ideal location for a city. It also meant that there were plenty of high, sharp outcroppings of rock protruding out of the earth like splinters of bone. Vash was all too familiar with this particular location; he'd stayed here dozens of times on his way to the rendezvous point where Sky City's now-defunct flyer used to pick him up for visits home.

Vash knelt by Knives, who was now crouched on the ground regaining his breath. "There's shade maybe ten minutes from here," Vash said. "Shelter until the worst of the sun is past." He didn't mention Knives' barely-scabbed wound.

Knives nodded wordlessly and hauled himself upright with a choked-back whimper of agony. Vash led the way, casting concerned glances over his shoulder as Knives lagged further and further behind. His twin would not ask for help; Vash knew that much. But until Knives started healing in both body and mind, Vash wanted to interfere as little as possible. Let Knives make this short walk by himself. If nothing else, it would give better exercise than leaning on Vash's shoulder the whole way.

The outcropping Vash led them to was huge, the hollow in its leeward face clearly not a natural phenomenon. The air was so dry that the shaded ground was nearly twenty degrees cooler than everything outside. Knives managed not to fall apart entirely, dignified enough to sit without help. As soon as he was off his feet, though, he slumped back against the rock wall like a man on the verge of death.

"You okay?" Vash asked. He was barely short of breath and most of his sweat had already dried off in the shade. Of course, he was much more accustomed to walking long distances. Some deep-down buried part of him was cheering at the sight of Knives suffering the same adjustment Vash had gone through decades ago.

Knives nodded, swallowing dryly and refusing to meet Vash's concerned gaze.

Vash slung the two packs to the ground and passed Knives a canteen of water. Watching him as he drank -- first in deep gulps, then more slowly, as if savoring every drop of the cool liquid -- Vash realized how truly wretched Knives looked. His ashen skin, already peppered with yellowing bruises, was now blotched pink with exertion and the beginnings of a sunburn. Though still unnaturally pale, Vash had tanned enough to withstand long exposure to the sun. Knives hadn't, and he was suffering for it.

"Gonna have to wear a hat or something," Vash said into the uncomfortable silence. Knives looked up, startled and questioning. Vash gestured vaguely at Knives' face. "You're burning. Been inside for too long. I can rig some kind of cover out of a spare shirt or something"

Knives blinked in response.

Vash shrugged, then held out his hand for the water. "Was just sayin'," he muttered.

Just when Vash had become convinced that Knives wasn't going to say a word while they waited out the noon sun, his brother's rasping voice caught him in the middle of taking a swig of water.

"Vashu."

Vash started, swallowed some water the wrong way and spent the next five minutes coughing.

"Guh," Vash managed finally. "Don't _do_ that. Say what now?"

He was shaken, and not just because of the unexpected coughing fit. Knives hadn't called him Vashu since they were children; the last time he'd heard that name was over a century ago. Had Knives had really remembered the nickname, or was it merely an endearment he'd thought of on a whim while they rested here?

Knives was speaking again; Vash struggled to bring himself back to the present to listen.

"This cliff, this shelter. It's been carved in. You can see the lines, scratch marks. Who made it?"

Vash looked up at the meager half-roof the hollow afforded, and the rich blue sky beyond. "Sand vipers," he said. "The bedrock is too solid for them to build real dens here, but they come through this region a lot. Free-range tomas herds move in fairly predictable paths between the cooler highlands down south and the deep desert to the north. Vipers follow them, hole up in the deep sands whenever the tomases settle for the season, then prey on the weak members of the herd. Since they can't build real dens while they're on the move, they make these shelters in cliff faces." Vash patted the cool, rough stone fondly. "They scratch out a little more space with each season. This one's old. I've stayed here before."

Knives stared at the place where the stone wall sloped down into the sand. He was thinking about what Jessica had said -- comparing him to a toothless viper bleeding on a doorstep. "The vipers aren't here now?" he asked.

"Nah," Vash said, leaning back against the wall and passing the canteen back to Knives. "It isn't the season for them. The tomases won't pass through for a couple of months yet."

Knives let his eyes drift half-shut in thought. "If they can make these partial caves in solid stone, why can't they build dens in bedrock?" he wondered aloud, not expecting an answer.

Vash surprised him by giving one. "Race memory, maybe... vipers have adapted to the surface environment, but they evolved from a different species that lived underground, near reservoirs. Slives. They were tunnelers. Stronger than vipers, but slower. Venomous. They're mostly extinct now." Vash fell silent, looking morose.

Knives got the sense that Vash was holding something back. He also felt the stirrings of a half-dead memory; the mere name of the slives brought back a distinct feeling of disgust and fear. He decided he didn't really want to know any more about them, but at the same time he couldn't help feeling a sort of morbid curiosity.

Vash levered himself to his feet with a grunting sound that Knives took to mean the conversation was over. "I don't think you should get out in the sun again for a couple of hours," Vash said, stepping right up to the edge of the cliff's shadow and peering up at the blinding sky. "Get some sleep. You need as much as you can get and this is about the safest kind of shelter you can find around here. Other animals steer clear because it's viper-made, and most bandits don't come this far off the roads."

"Bandits?" Knives asked blankly.

Vash's back was turned, so Knives didn't see the wince that passed over his face. _Damn it,_ Vash thought privately. _I can't slip up like that. He doesn't need to know about the bad in humans until he's had a taste of the good._

"People who steal from others," Vash said shortly.

"Oh." Knives didn't question him further, for which Vash was grateful.

"I'm going on," Vash said, moving back to Knives' side to pick up the lighter of the packs and shoulder it. "There's a town not far from here, and I need to talk to someone there. I'll be back in an hour or two. You sleep, eat something and keep healing. We can leave when it's cooler and stay in town for the night -- it won't take much more than an hour to get there."

Knives did the mental math. Vash was clearly anticipating that Knives would slow him down. The thought made Knives uncomfortable.

"All right," was all Knives said.

Vash spoke a little longer, but Knives wasn't listening. When his brother walked away into the desert, he watched in silence.

* * *

Knives tossed and turned in a fitful doze, unintentionally flinging away the rolled-up cloak he was using for a pillow. He made small choking noises in his sleep.  
_  
"A man walks into a hotel."_ Loud, raucous voice. The smell of alcohol. An unfunny joke bellowed at the top of unseemingly full-voiced lungs. _"A man walks into a hotel, hands the innkeeper three nails and he asks --"_ (I don't want to hear the end of this joke, I really don't) -- _"CAN YOU PUT ME UP FOR THE NIGHT!"_ Heartless laughter and groans from the others, from Mary and Rowan and Joey the captain. Who was the cruel voice? Did it have a name? Knives couldn't remember.  
_  
Don't you remember?_

_They're making a different kind of Eden! With no wars, and no stealing..._

It's a different kind of Eden all right. Not only with stealing, but also full of misunderstanding and distrust and cruelty and unfunny jokes.

Yet...

Yet there was the memory of Milly feeding him, easing his humiliation with kind words. Of Jessica cutting his hair, putting aside her hatred in favor of a few moments' peace. True memories, not broken or buried, untouched by whatever trauma had eaten away the rest of his past. True kindness.

Here, also, were memories of black hair like a ravens' wing arrayed against glass clouded with cold and ice; a fine-boned hand stroking through the crushed-silk green of the rec room floor; chocolate eyes shining with hope, upturned to a cloudless holographic sky.

And connected with those images -- bitterness and hatred. A film of grime over the porcelain, tarnish rotting away the silver, leeches digging ever-deeper into the unmarred flesh. Her flesh was not like Vash's. Her flesh was pristine, pale. He hated it. Hated her -- hated her sensibility, her practicality, her teachings and her love. Hated them because they stole Vash away from him, because they made _her_ the only link, the only bridge between himself and his twin. There was nothing he could say to Vash that didn't first require him to pass the test of her standards, and her only standard was absolute perfection, and how could he ever be that?  
_  
I will be perfect. I **am** perfect. It's only the others who aren't._

Vash loved her, and yet Knives knew she was false. He'd seen the way she composed her expressions and measured her words. She was conditioning them, and Vash was oblivious. How could he not be angry? How could he not be frustrated? How could he possibly be at fault for wanting to save his brother from the love of a woman who wanted nothing from him but her own personal angel to go with her own personal Eden?

He remembered begging.  
_  
Why? Sister, Sisters, why am I afraid of her? She's lulling him and I'm afraid he'll never wake up._

_This is our life and this is our essence and we are the light and the one made of many and we know nothing but this one truth and we do not know what the small one means by hate or love or fear. Why is it necessary for you to feel so? It hurts us. You hurt us with your questions. You hurt us with your life._

_Stop it._ Stop asking questions. _Stop hurting us._ Stop it.  
_  
"It's a different kind of Eden, Knives! Don't you remember what Rem said?"_  
_  
STOP SAYING HER NAME!_

Screaming and screaming at the nothingness to stop, stop the hurting --

Spiraling down.  
_  
stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it stop it STOP IT **STOP**_

"What if she was right? In that case, what I did was a huge mistake."

"You're just a human, like the rest of them. I know my choice is the right one."  
**_  
NO, DON'T --_**

Knives jerked awake.

* * *

What was the word for this? There was a word for this. The feeling of falling, then waking flat on the ground. Spinning in two dimensions, stillness in the third. Disconcertion. Vertigo. Some scientific word that he couldn't remember.

Couldn't remember...

Knives rolled onto his side, curled up tight and ignored the pain in his stomach. It was dimmer outside the hollow -- late afternoon. Vash should be back. Shouldn't he?

Knives stared out at the vast landscape that made him feel so small and thought about his dream. Every fragment that came to him was only a tiny piece of a puzzle so complex that he didn't even know what it was about, much less how to start putting the pieces together. These dreams were useless, maddening -- and yet he longed for each one to come faster, to give him a little more taste of reality, no matter whether that reality tasted sweet or bloody.

He could see only two possibilities -- either he was severely mentally disturbed and no one had the heart to tell him so, or something had gone very, very wrong in his past. Either way, his own lack of knowledge about himself was terrifying. It was like being tied down in a small, locked room with no lights and no air, screaming for help into a vacuum.

As he lay there, panicked into utter stillness, words came to him. Words he both knew and didn't know; words that touched something deep and strong within him, that loosened the knots and allowed him to breathe a little easier. Without thinking, he murmured the phrase aloud.

"It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done; it is a far, far better rest that I go to, than I have ever known."

Knives realized that he was shaking.

* * *

"Is Max Simon around?"

"He's in the back room. May I ask who--"  
_  
"Vash! 'S that you, kid?"_

A door slammed open. The secretary, who was obviously new, winced and cast a sideways glance at the battered doorframe to see if today was the day it would finally crack and bring the whole wall down on the eccentric weatherman's head. Apparently it wasn't. The secretary heaved a sigh of relief and proceeded to ignore both men.

Vash laughed and scratched the back of his head, his usual humble-cum-awkward greeting for old friends. "He-ey, Max! How's the weather looking?"

Short, stocky and good-tempered as usual, Max near-bellowed with laughter. "You want the bit about the sun, or the bit about the heat? Kinda can't have one without the other, and we got both, and lots of 'em at that. Where've you been, kid? Seein' how the old-timers are doing now they're stuck in the same mess as the rest of us?"

While he was talking, Max led the way into the back room and gave the ancient framework another integrity check when he closed the door behind him. Vash let the pack slide from his shoulder to the floor while Max took a seat on top of several scattered charts on his desk.

"You could say that," Vash replied, settling back against the wall. He let his smile fade, and Max's expression fell along with it. Vash not smiling was never a good sign.

"What's happened?" Max asked levelly.

Vash looked away for a couple of breaths, preparing himself. "Doc's dead," he said finally, looking back at his old friend. "And there's a lot of people hurt. Crash victims, planetside diseases they've never seen before, a lot of unrest and distrust flying around. I... I couldn't do anything. I'm so sorry I had to bring the news about Doc, Max, but you needed to know..."

Max had been a friend of the Doctor's for years -- not as long as Vash, but long enough. His face fell even further with the news. "I see," he said blankly, even though he didn't really. Vash knew he didn't. It would take a long time -- maybe even a trip to the fallen city himself, to look with his own eyes -- before Max would really see.

"There's something else," Vash said. "I need a favor."

"Still hunting for that brother of yours?" Max asked hollowly, misinterpreting Vash's words. "I've had no news lately. Seems all the strange disappearances have stopped completely for the last month or so."

"I know," Vash said, bracing himself against the wall. "That's because Knives was with me."

Max didn't even react, just stared. Complete information overload. Vash hadn't seen him like this since he'd first told him about his past. He kicked himself mentally -- he should have broken the news more gently, but he didn't really have the time. He wanted to get back into the desert as soon as possible.

"Knives was with you," Max repeated.

"Yes," said Vash.

"The murderer of millions, the one who framed you for nearly everything the legends say you've done, was with you. For a month. And yet you seem to be very alive."

"Yes," said Vash, "he has amnesia."

Max shook his head slowly. "The evil twin has amnesia," he muttered to himself. "Of all the things..."

Vash frowned. "He's not evil."

"Oh, he's not _evil,_ says the man with half his chest ripped off and most of his limbs reattached with string and glue," Max burst out sarcastically. "What the hell are you thinking, you stupid sonuvabitch?"

The frown deepened. "I'm taking care of him. He's my own flesh and blood, thanks. Besides, he barely remembers anything -- I had to teach him English all over again, it was that bad. We were on the ship until now, but a mob organized against him. He's injured and confused and I just want to get him somewhere safe where he can learn how to live again, better this time."

Max's mild hysteria was alleviated by Vash's words, but not completely. "What are you suggesting, bringing him into Oregon? Vash..." His expression softened slightly. "Vash, _I_ could take it, but the people here don't want him."

"They don't even know him," Vash objected.

"They don't want to see anyone from the ship," Max clarified. "If you come from that direction, they'll drive you out. Besides, the Fris and Polo families haven't vanished -- you're not exactly an enemy, but they won't do right by you either. That Slater kid has it out for you, says you humiliated him and slandered the Polo family name by not letting him kill that crazy father. You can't _stay._"

Vash shook his head. "You misunderstand me," he said. "I don't want to stay. Just want to pass through, hopefully sleep in peace for one night. We're heading for Terma, but I want to ease Knives into a smaller town before we get to a full-fledged city."

Max sighed in resignation. "So, you said something about a favor?"

"Advice. News. Someplace to stay," Vash said. "I figure things have been pretty shook up since the big uproar between the powerhouse families and Sky City's crash. Wanted to check that my hideouts are still in place before I showed up with a liability like Knives."

Max shook his head. "You're pretty much screwed there, kid. Business in this town was nearly all monopolized by the Polo family, but they've gone nuts and the economy's pretty much kaput by now. All sorts of staff switch-ups, people unemployed. You've got few friends left here."

"Anything at all? Anyone?" Vash asked, dismayed.

Max hesitated, then heaved a great sigh and said, "Yeah, yeah Vash. There's me."

Vash blinked, straightening. "I didn't mean --"

"The Montague caravan's passing by from the north of town around first sunset; you go around a bit, come down from that direction like you just got off the caravan and no one'll ever have to know you came from the ship. I'll take a couple of tomases out to the old stoneworker's -- you know where. You two can stay with me and the girls tonight."

"Max, I didn't want to impose on you --"

"Look, Vash," Max said bluntly, "if you don't stick close to me you're gonna be taking a huge risk. This town's in chaos right now, no nicer way of putting it. If you wanna put your oh-so-beloved maniac into that kind of a situation, be my guest, but I'd rather you stayed with me. _I_ don't want anywhere near him, but I want other people near him even less. I'm willing to do this for the town's sake."

Vash winced. "Max... Look, I'm not going to argue about Knives, I know this whole thing is hard to accept. But when you see him --"

"I won't screw up whatever you're trying to do for him," Max said, "or _to_ him, whatever the hell you're thinking. I'll be civil. I won't tell him about his past. But _I don't like it,_ Vash -- if he has amnesia like you say, then keeping up this act is only going to torment him. It's like putting a mad criminal in an isolation tank -- and they outlawed that nearly forty years ago 'cause it was deemed inhumane. Or don't you _remember?"_

Vash shook his head helplessly. "It's the only thing I can do," he said. "If I tell him everything now, it'll just make it harder for me to get through to him afterwards. Maybe impossible."

"How do you know that?" Max asked. "You ask him?"

"No, but --"

"Just bring him here, Vash," Max interrupted with a sigh. "And keep your head low. I worry for you sometimes."

* * *

"You're late."

"Hey! Right where I left you, huh? Did you sleep?"

"Doesn't matter. I'm awake now. And you're late."

Vash flumped down in the sand, tugging at his sweat-stained shirt collar. "Sorry, I nosed around town a little bit. I've talked to an old friend of mine there, and he's going to put us up for the night."

"Three nails," Knives murmured under his breath.

"What was that?" Vash asked distractedly, busily digging through the packs and switching items between them.

"Nothing," Knives said quietly. He was slowly beginning to learn the body language of unobtrusiveness, creating a mask of invisibility to keep Vash unconcerned about him and, therefore, out of his thoughts. He didn't know exactly why, but he didn't want Vash to know that he was beginning to remember. Not yet anyway.

Maybe it was because of that distance that appeared in Vash's eyes whenever Knives said anything about the past. Maybe it was because, all of a sudden, Knives would once again be faced with that forbidden link, that impossible standard of perfection. Maybe it was because, for the first time in what felt like eternity, _she _(whoever she was) was truly dead -- and Knives wanted her to stay that way.

"Vash," Knives said suddenly.

"Hm-mm?" Vash shook a canteen to see if it was empty, found that it was, and shoved it to the bottom of his own pack, transferring a full one to Knives'.

"How old am I -- are we?"

Vash faltered, hands clenching convulsively around the neck of Knives' duffel. "Why?" he asked after a moment. "Do you feel... old?"

Knives looked out at the empty horizon with its pre-sunset haze, all salmon and pale orange and blurry. "No," he said softly. "I feel too young. I feel like nothing is behind me, and everything's ahead."

Vash relaxed visibly, even going so far as to smile at Knives' words. "We're not that old, Knives," he said in a reassuring tone. "Compared to the planet we're hardly more than infants, y'know? And it's good to look forward to what's ahead -- it's good not to worry to much about the past. Your ticket to the future is always blank."

Knives just nodded, knowing Vash would never really give him a straight answer -- not on this, and not on any other topic he chose to question. He hadn't really expected one this time, which was why he had chosen his words so carefully. But what Knives didn't tell Vash was that the nothingness behind him was not so much a starting line as it was the edge of a cliff; and Knives felt that if he wasn't careful, he would lose his balance and fall back into the terrible void.

All he felt was vertigo. Vertigo and disconcertion... and something else he couldn't remember.

* * *

The walk to town was comparatively short, but it had the illusion of length. The suns set quickly, making time seem like it was passing at an inordinate rate; hours of daylight gone in mere moments.

Plus, there was the illusion of never quite reaching their destination -- as soon as the city of New Oregon was in sight on the horizon, Vash turned to the side and started walking around it to the north. Knives followed without question, although his low mood and the pain in his legs and abdomen were not improved any by the sight of untouchable shelter and comfort in the near distance.

Right about when the larger of the two suns sank into the earth, a line of billowing dust not far to the north caught Knives' eye. He caught up with Vash in a couple of long, painful strides, nudged his brother's shoulder and pointed.

Vash nodded. "That should be the caravan passing by. We're coming down to the city from that direction -- it'll be easier to get in that way." It was only a half-truth, of course, but Vash didn't feel like elaborating and Knives didn't question him.

Actually, Vash was becoming more and more concerned about Knives' apparent lack of curiosity. He never opposed Vash, never argued any point, never pushed when Vash didn't feel like talking. He wasn't at all like the straightforward Knives of the past, who had always been prowling for more information, manipulating and seducing and even torturing to get people to talk. Vash supposed he should be grateful that Knives hadn't remembered any of that... that he had changed into someone much calmer, more lucid and accepting. But still -- it was eerie and Vash didn't like it, didn't like it at all.  
_  
I've lost my enemy, but I've lost my brother as well,_ Vash thought, glancing over his shoulder at the injured man struggling along behind him. _Is this really what I wanted?  
_

* * *

Max was waiting for them just as he'd promised, holding one of his prized pure-bred tomases by a halter. Ever since he'd won New Oregon's 10th annual tomas derby, he'd kept on breeding the pack animals as a hobby on the side of his forecasting job. He'd always liked the creatures -- he liked to relate them to Vash, in fact, saying that both Plant and beast were bird-brained and too useful for their own good. That was usually right before he warned Vash (yet again) about being taken advantage of.

Knives was fascinated by the tomas, who sank under the weight of his and Vash's packs without complaint. He tried to touch it, but the beast shied away at the scent of him, sensing that he wasn't fully human. Its eyes rolled back towards Max, wide enough to show a rim of white around the edges.

"There, boy," Max crooned, moving up to the beast's neck and patting it reassuringly. "No enemies here."

Knives didn't miss the barely-audible note of sarcasm in the man's voice.

Max's "girls" turned out to be a sister, a friendly old dog, and half a dozen female tomases grazing in a well-tended patch of grass out back. The house itself was stone with wood trim, just like all the others in town. Knives found it entirely alien, having seen nothing outside the metal walls of the ship -- he couldn't keep his eyes off things, head swinging around unconsciously to catch a glimpse of whatever strange things were behind him, above him, off to the sides.

The tomases cawed loudly and trotted away from him as he and Vash drew near, but the long-haired mutt ambled towards them without a care in the world, favoring her back leg when she walked. She acknowledged Max, then sniffed at Vash before moving on to Knives, who she promptly tried to jump on.

Knives' eyes widened in an expression of helpless panic that made Vash snort with barely-suppressed laughter. He covered it up quickly when Knives gave him an accusing glare.

Max didn't bother hiding his amusement. "Lacey, down girl. Lacey! Aw, she doesn't mean any harm by it... she likes you, that's all. Pet her and she'll get down. Mind you, she'll never leave you alone again neither. Oy, Sophie!"

Max's older sister came out of the house wiping floury hands on her jeans, and called a greeting with a smile. Max and Vash went on ahead to talk to her, but Knives lagged behind, feeling awkward and left-out. He gave Sophie a vague, mechanical smile when she waved at him, but he didn't feel it. These were people he didn't know -- Vash's friends, always Vash's friends, people Vash knew and Knives never would. It had been the same back at the ship. It had been the same back at the _other_ ship, even, the first ship -- the unattainable link and the standard of perfection.

There was no way to get to Vash without going through a middleman, Knives decided. That was entirely what was wrong with this picture. Always had been.

A soft whining from somewhere around his knee made Knives look down. The dog -- Lacey? -- was staring up at him with big brown doe-eyes and a sad expression, if dogs had facial expressions. Knives had never seen a dog, or at least didn't remember seeing any, but for some reason the animal's inhuman appearance didn't bother him at all. In fact, he felt instantly more comfortable around this animal than he had around most humans.

Hesitantly, Knives reached down and laid a hand on Lacey's brown-furred head. It was surprisingly soft. She nuzzled her damp nose up between his fingers, trying to get him to scratch properly. He stroked a hand down her neck and back to feel more of the unbelievably soft fur, and her jaw immediately fell open in a tongue-lolling grin.

"Knives!" Vash and the others were standing on the porch -- Knives looked up and saw that it was Vash who'd called him. Vash beckoned for Knives to come join them.

Knives hesitated, giving Lacey a questioning look as if to ask _Do you mind if I go?_ Lacey just grinned at him.

Just then, Sophie whistled. "Laaaacey, come on girl," she called. "Dinner, Lacey."

The dog gave Knives one last lick on the hand and galloped off to the house to eat her own dinner and then, hopefully, to beg lots of underhanded scraps off everyone else.

Knives walked up the the porch and dutifully met people, shaking hands and saying little. He watched his brother to see what to do, ate Sophie's homemade stew in silence, paid little attention to the niceties that were said. Sophie seemed nice. A lot like a grown-up version of Jessica, actually, right down to the braids. Knives risked smiling at her and found that she immediately took it as a sign to engage him in conversation. He gave mostly monosyllabic answers to her questions and she backed off soon enough, going back to Vash.

The man named Max remained almost as quiet as Knives. The Plant looked over at him from time to time but could never quite catch Max staring at him, though Knives could feel the man's eyes boring into him whenever Knives wasn't looking.

As soon as she'd finished with her own dinner, Lacey the mutt came over and settled quite comfortably on Knives' feet. He stroked her absently through most of dinner and the small talk afterwards, finding (as so many other house guests in the world had found before him) that being the one guest to entertain the family pet was the perfect excuse for ignoring everyone else. It also kept his hands occupied, which was more than a little comforting.

Because of his preoccupation with Lacey and his own thoughts, Knives didn't notice so much when Sophie left with the dishes or when Vash went to help her. Alone with Max and the dog, Knives finally sensed the quiet in the room and looked up.

Max was looking at him. Finally, Knives could meet the man's eyes and not feel so spyed-on. Knives sat up straighter, not sure what was about to happen but at least knowing that he could handle it better now than he could have earlier in the day.

"So," said Max. "You're Knives. I've heard a lot about you."

"Funny," Knives replied. "I haven't heard a lot about me."

Max's face broke into a grin -- not a particularly friendly grin, but it was better than the stern blankness of his expression before. "I like that," he said, crossing his arms over his chest. "I definitely like that. So Vash tells me you can't remember anything."  
_  
Oh, I remember,_ Knives though idly. _Seconds at a time and never enough, but I do remember._ "Not a thing," he said aloud, tonelessly.

Max leaned forward, elbows on knees, and gave Knives a serious _I've-got-something-to-say_ look. "Look, kid. I don't know what you know, or how well you know your brother, but he's in serious trouble in this town. I didn't want to tell him earlier because he never listens to me, not really. But if you two go out anywhere and I'm not with you, you keep an eye out. Watch out for him, he needs the extra set of eyes. What he _really_ needs is to avoid trouble in the first place instead of trying to find a bloodless way out of it; I want you to do that for him, if you can."

Knives put an unconscious hand to his stomach as sympathetic pain flared up at the idea of Vash getting hurt. "I will," he said softly.

Max looked relieved. "Okay. Okay. Thanks for that, at least." He leaned back in his seat. "You just be careful yourself, kid."

Knives raised an eyebrow in question.

"Never know what could happen in a place like this," Max said enigmatically.

Vash came back from the kitchen at that point, hands in pockets and a stupid grin plastered on his face for old times' sakes. "Are you trying to scare him, Max? Thought you only saved that for Halloween."

Max snorted. "I'm always scary, Vash. It's nearly ten. You leaving early tomorrow?"

Vash nodded. "Tryin' to get started earlier so we can get a lot of distance covered before noon."

"Then go to bed," Max said with finality, and promptly left to talk to Sophie in the kitchen.

Vash nodded to the hall door to his left. "You get the guest bed, I get the couch."

"Why?"

"Because I said so," Vash replied cheekily. "C'mon, I'll show you around first."

Knives got up to follow Vash, giving Lacey one last apologetic glance. She pouted up at him from the floor.

Halfway down the dark hallway to the guest bedroom, Knives spoke up. "Vash?"

"Hm?"

"How do you know Max?"

Vash didn't falter this time; he was learning to hide his deer-in-the-headlights panic whenever Knives asked delicate questions. Of course it would be madness to tell Knives that Max was the grand-nephew of a man Knives had killed over fifty years ago. Vash couldn't say that, obviously.

"He's an old friend of the ship people," Vash said mildly. It was the truth; Max had even lived on the ship for a year once, studying weather patterns. "Don't worry, Knives, they're nice people. It's not a bad town. You'll fit in fine."

But Knives remembered Max's fervent warning only a few minutes ago, and knew that Vash was lying.

* * *

_"Truth is a whisper and only a choice  
Nobody hears above this noise  
Always a risk when you try and believe  
I know there's so much more than me_

_I got caught in the ruse of the world  
It's just a promise no one ever keeps  
And now it's changing while we sleep  
And no one here can see_

_You know all I am...  
Can you teach me to believe in something?"  
_--Goo Goo Dolls, "Truth Is A Whisper"  
------------

Review Replies: Rindeseyu - Actually I have a pretty good idea how long... cringes and cowers I'm sorry I suck so bad at pacing! But I'm glad you like the story anyway and am flattered that you keep reading despite my total lack of updating-ness:)

peridot 3783 - Yes! 'Assumed knowledge' is the exact problem that has haunted me throughout every math class I have ever taken in my entire life. So I kinda write Knives from personal experience on that front. :) And yeah, the Vash/Knives dynamic and the whole moral dilemma caused by the amnesia pretty much takes up all my writerly headspace, although I am trying to let the girls be their own, strong characters as well. I kinda had to drop them for a bit here so I could get Vash and Knives alone, but I'll weasel them back into the plot somehow. I haven't given up on Meryl and Milly, or indeed any other secondary characters, just yet. :)


	14. Learning Curve

Author's Note: At long last, I give you chapter 14! This was a bugger to write, excuse my French, and it contains language (ha), although if you've read up 'til now I don't see how you can possibly care. The end is intentionally ambiguous; explanations will be forthcoming in later chapters. Manga readers, as usual, will get many details that anime viewers will not. Also, there is a reference to a very old (now Criterion Collection) movie called _The Passion of Joan of Arc,_ which wasn't a mistake on my part, as _Joan of Arc_ is an extremely different film from Mel Gibson's _Passion of the Christ_, and also an infinitely better one. It's about the trial of Joan of Arc, and I can see Vash hating it for its gruesome reality, Knives loving it for the same reason, and Rem loving it for its messages of nobility, grace, and piety. So, a liking that Rem and Knives actually share. I recommend that anyone who can get their hands on this movie give it a go. It's a gorgeous bit of filmmaking.

---------  
Chapter Fourteen: Learning Curve  
---------

"We musn't sleep a wink all night or we might wake up -- changed."  
--Invasion of the Body Snatchers  
----------

Knives woke and instantly knew he was dying.

He rolled onto his left side with a sharp gasp, control of his own body slipping out of his grasp as pain swept up the side pressed into the mattress. The pressure gave only the tiniest relief from the fire in his abdomen. He could feel each individual muscle fluttering like a pinned butterfly, still alive but dying in agony, as his heart beat a rapid escape route from his chest through his throat and out his eyes in the form of tears.

A second of excruciating lucidity told him that the pain was merely a muscle cramp, just like several he'd had before after exercising on the ship. The cramping was only worse this time because of his overexertion in the desert yesterday.

But his body refused to listen to his mind's orders to relax. Involuntary convulsions tugged his abdomen apart, like an overeager vivisection. He screwed his eyes shut tight, hot tears leaking from the corners, and let only the softest groan escape his throat.

Somewhere under the pain, something... _else_ was uncoiling, like a poisonous snake, ready to strike. It rose in response to Knives' vulnerability, some kind of hair-trigger natural defense mechanism. The feeling scared him -- it was huge, raw, like vomit only cleaner, tightening his throat and blurring his vision and dulling his perceptions. A sharp prickling broke out along his neck and spine, like the feeling of being watched, but more _real,_ more tangible than just a feeling...

Then the cramping passed, convulsions slowing to the mildest of tics every few minutes and then to nothing at all. He felt sore all over and nauseous, and very, very awake. And the power from underneath was not gone.

It felt... familiar. Natural. Comfortable, almost. Except that it was so _much_, so _fast,_ and he was still in pain and this power, whatever it was, was like a lucid nightmare, and being familiar with it without knowing _why_ was just as frightening as the power itself.

Knives groaned again. The sound helped break through his half-conscious fear and brought him fully back to reality. Dazed, he levered himself upright on sore, rubbery arms and felt the same tingling prickle from before sweep up his spine. He winced.

"V... Vash..." he tried, but his voice was barely above a whisper. On second thought he decided he didn't want Vash in here anyway. Some things Knives would rather figure out on his own.

Knives ground the heels of his hands into his eyes, concentrating on the dull red spots in the black, forcing himself awake and calm. He raking trembling fingers through his hair, stared at the far wall, curled inwards to fight the throbbing ache in his gut, and thought hard.

His fingertips brushed something on the back of his neck, and he froze. Insect? He'd gotten pretty familiar with various desert beetle species yesterday. No; this was soft, unmoving. Not alive. Just some fuzz, or a feather out of the pillow. Knives made as if to pluck it off, grasped it between two fingers and started to pull--

"Nnnghhkn," he choked, letting go with a reflexive grimace. "Ack," he added for good measure.

The feathery thing was attached to his neck. _Growing_ out of his neck. He tentatively ran exploratory fingers over it, not pulling this time, just testing. The transition from skin to feather was flawless. Running his hands further down, he discovered that the feathery patch ran all the way down the back of his neck and partway down his spine, a ridge of downy fluff, completely alien and yet strangely appropriate. The feathers and the raw power were somehow the same thing, Knives realized. There was something bizarre about his body that Vash knew, but Vash wasn't telling, and neither were Knives' recalcitrant memories.

Maddening. This lack of information was _maddening_.

Knives was just thinking about struggling down the hall to the bathroom to see if he could get a good look at the feathers on his back, when he noticed that the power surging in his guts was fading. The danger was past, he was no longer vulnerable, and the defense mechanism was subsiding, taking the feathers with it. He felt them retreating into his skin, leaving behind a mild itchy soreness like sunburn.

All residual fear vanished in an instant. Knowing how close he had just been to a breakthrough, only to have all the answers swallowed up by his own body... Would this frustration never end?

"Damn it," Knives breathed.

----------

It was still dark out when Knives limped out of the guest room. He couldn't go back to sleep; he thought some fresh air would help clear his mind. Vash had not yet told him how to read clocks, so the cuckoo clock in the hall told him nothing whatsoever, but he logically assumed no one else would be awake at such an early hour.

He was wrong. Padding into the living room, silent so as not to wake his brother sleeping on the couch, he could just make out the sound of voices in the kitchen.

"...olo isn't going to like it," said a voice that sounded distinctly female despite being low. Sophie.

"No one in their right mind would like it," said Max's voice, barely above a whisper.

"When?" Sophie asked softly.

"I'm leaving now," Max replied. "Vash wants to get moving before nine, so I've got to get word out before he wakes up and has time to object."

Suspicion and fear bloomed like a fireball inside Knives. He froze midstep, eyes flicking between his brother's peaceful face and the kitchen door, suddenly afraid that they would hear him and... do what? He didn't know. And not knowing only made it worse.

"Are you sure you can talk him into it?" Sophie's voice pressed worriedly. There were soft shuffling sounds. People moving.

"I've got a lot of favors to call in," Max muttered, getting closer to the door between kitchen and living room from the sound of it. Knives took a slow, cautious backward step.

"Max," Sophie pleaded. The footsteps stopped and the voices became so low that Knives couldn't make them out. He took the opportunity to back up further, until his shoulder bumped the wall and he spun silently around into the hall from which he had come only a minute before. He pressed himself against the wall in the darkness of the hallway, just out of sight of the living room, and breathed a quiet sigh of relief.

The murmuring from the kitchen stopped and the shuffling footsteps resumed. Knives held his breath, listened to the steps move across the living room floor -- away from the hall, out towards the front door. The door creaked open; voices again, brief, too quiet to make out but obviously an exchange of goodbyes. Then the door snapped shut and there was silence.

Did they both leave? Knives leaned cautiously away from the wall, wincing as the tightly controlled movements put more strain on his already-bludgeoned muscles. Rising to the balls of his feet, he turned just far enough to see around the doorframe. No movement. He peered further, then jerked back as if burned -- Sophie was standing forlornly by the door, gazing in the direction of the out-of-sight couch and its occupant.

He backed up a few steps, made a quiet but audible show of opening and shutting the guest room door, and dragged himself once again down the hall into the living room. As he'd predicted, Sophie had heard the click of the bedroom door and gathered her wits. There was no sign of her when Knives entered the living room, although he thought he heard the sigh of air from a door closing. Kitchen door or front? He couldn't tell, but he didn't trust her or Max enough to go looking for them in his current injured state.

Knives stopped just short of the couch, looking down at Vash's sleep-softened face, and wondered at their hosts' intentions. He didn't realize until now how little he'd trusted them, as their suspicious actions didn't shock him in the slightest. He understood, though dimly, that some part of him had expected a betrayal all along.

"Vash," he murmured, feeling around the edges of the name as it left his lips. Vash was a quiet name, short and solid and to the point, businesslike unlike its owner. It felt soft on the tongue. Knives, on the other hand... Knives was a thinner name, thin like a razorblade, and even in a whisper the long i and sibilant s made it loud. Hissing. It didn't sit easily with Knives, his name. It felt... out-of-place, somehow. It wasn't even a proper name, like Vash. It was a word for something else, plural of knife, and who had named him Knives, anyway? He resented them, whoever they were.

Vash grumbled something in his sleep and turned just far enough for his arm to slip off his chest and off the couch, wrist hitting the floor with a dull thud. He shot awake in an instant.

"Wmuh?" Vash asked blearily. The corner of Knives' mouth twitched upward at the half-drugged expression on his brother's face. Vash swung his bare feet to the floor and twisted a bit, stretching. "It's early, Knives."

Knives shrugged.

A little too conveniently, the front door opened and Sophie entered, wiping too little sweat to be believable off her forehead. "Oh!" she said, feigning some very genuine-sounding surprise. "You're up. I was just out feeding the tomases." The alibi was plausible but unnecessary, which only stoked Knives' mistrust.

"Where's Max?" Vash asked through a yawn, scratching his neck nonchalantly.

"Oh, he had to go out," Sophie replied easily. "Emergency at work. Maybe a typhoon building in the deeps."

The exchange was innocent enough, but there was something in Vash's voice that made Knives wonder just how asleep Vash had been, really. And whether Vash knew that he, Knives, had faked his own waking.  
_  
We're liars all,_ Knives thought, keeping his mouth shut as Vash got up and helped Sophie with breakfast. He limped unobtrusively out of the living room, down the hall to the bathroom, and stared at himself in the mirror.

Vash told him to trust these people, then didn't follow his own advice. Why else would Vash fake sleep to listen to the conversation in the kitchen? Continue faking sleep to throw Knives off the same way he wanted to throw off Max and Sophie? Where was Max, what "word" was he spreading, why were he and his sister so secretive?

Why had Knives himself hidden from all of them, like a coward, just like the sneaks and liars all the rest were all proving themselves to be?

Knives turned his head slowly to catch a glimpse of the back of his neck in the mirror.

He couldn't trust anyone in this world. Even himself.

---------

Vash leaned over the kitchen sink, scrubbing listlessly at the breakfast dishes, hunched forward as if trying to make himself smaller. He'd left Knives outside to commune with the dog on the front porch nearly half an hour ago. It was almost nine. They really needed to get moving, but knowing what he did now, Vash wasn't really sure he wanted to.  
_  
Damn it, Max,_ Vash thought, picking angrily at a stubborn bit of egg stuck between the tines of a fork. _I told you we would be fine by ourselves._ And now there would be _guards_ trailing them everywhere in town, screwing with Vash's senses and instincts, so he'd never be able to tell if they were being followed by some enemy or if a pair of eyes he felt on the back of his neck merely belonged to another damned hired man of Max and the Fris'. Not to mention that if Knives sensed they were being followed, there was no telling what he'd do or think. Vash knew Knives had heard at least the very end of Max and Sophie's coversation, and that was enough to make anyone suspicious.

And the way Knives had backed out and feigned waking to cover up for his eavesdropping was just as nervewracking for Vash as the thought of being followed everywhere. _Where does he get this stealth from? Naturally?_ Vash thought anxiously. _But that would mean he must be picking up on his old nature, and I can't tell how far the leakage goes... is it just instincts, or are there real memories involved...?  
_  
He dropped the fork and the tines struck a resounding chord against the metal bowl of the sink.

_He won't talk to me.  
_  
Vash shut his eyes, took a deep breath, let his hands hang limp in the sudsy water. He could do this, he assured himself. It wasn't too late yet. There would be town today, a little taste of human society, and then another week or so of desert to bond, or just talk, or whatever Knives seemed willing to do. And then Terma. Maybe Knives would be ready for Terma by then, maybe not, but there was nothing for it but to try. If Vash could prove the worth of humans _now,_ while Knives was still uncertain, then maybe... just maybe, even if his memories did come back, he would already be changed enough to make a difference. Just enough of a difference that they could communicate without fear of killing each other. Just enough to matter.

The smallest change was all Vash was asking for. A gap in the wall they'd built between them. Some little crack of common ground to help break down the stonework.  
_  
He _will_ talk to me,_ Vash amended his thoughts carefully. _He _will_ understand._

_Gotta give him some more time, that's all._

-------

The last thing Knives needed was more time alone to think. He wished Vash would hurry up and finish all the chores he'd volunteered to do to pay for their lodging so they could get moving. He didn't care that his whole body flinched at the thought of another days' walking, didn't care that he was twitchy and nervous and in pain and feeling severely antisocial; he just wanted to move. _Needed_ to move. Needed to get away.

Something about this place was smothering, hostile. Too much moisture in air that should be dry as a bone; too much evaporated sweat and smoky exhales and peoples' laundry drying in alleys. And with the alien humidity came alien smells, human smells, raw and fresh and vivid, not at all like the stale circulated air on the ship. No temperature regulation, either. No organization whatsoever. Chaos, no system, just chaos. People doing whatever they wanted to, going wherever they wanted to go. Planetside life was frighteningly open-ended.

But Knives found himself hesitating to label and dismiss. He spent a quiet, introspective half-hour watching the two populated streets and single back alley he could see from the porch. The longer he watched, the more he could see the faint edges of a pattern unfolding. He fiddled with various concepts in his head, started putting a few edge bits of the puzzle together -- figured out how to recognize families, businessmen, the difference between shops and houses, a few of the more typical greetings. Small but vital facts of life that no one, especially Vash, seemed to have realized he was lacking.

Interaction in this social world looked far too complicated to someone stuck outside it. Knives wasn't looking forward to the rest of the day, but he'd steeled himself for the ordeal as best he knew how and would rather get it over with than contemplate it longer.

He ran one hand through Lacey's fur, absently scratching under her collar. She looked up at him, mouth open in a lazy dog-grin, fluffy tail thumping noisily on the wooden deck. Hollow, regular thumping. Hollow.  
_  
metallic crack and **CLANG**, hollow metal broken open and there was blood there, hands stained with it, faster faster faster faster fasterfasterfasterfast_

"You ready to go?"

Knives came back to himself with a start, cold despite the heat, sweat cooling on the back of his neck. Tingling there. Same as this morning. He resisted the urge to touch, to feel if the feathers had come back, answers which might have come back, but Vash would see if he touched himself and it would look suspicious and he couldn't look suspicious. Everything was suspicious enough already.

Lacey whined softly. Knives loosened his death-grip on her fur so it didn't hurt her.

"I've been ready," he said calmly, patting Lacey one last time and standing, turning to face Vash standing in the door, gloves already covering his dishwater-pruned hands. Knives could smell the soap on him.

Vash tossed him his pack. "I've told Sophie goodbye and left a note," he said unnecessarily. Knives could sense his reluctance, but if they were going to do this, they were goddamn well going to do it and Knives wasn't going to wait for Vash to drag it out further.

"Then let's go," Knives said, tone final, and stepped off the sheltered porch into the deep end of human existence.

---------

Downtown wasn't nearly as bad as Knives had expected it to be. The hostility was still there under the surface, badly hidden in sideways glances, in children hustled along by their parents, in the hooded stares of burly workers, in window shutters blatantly closed against the only breeze on a hot day. But somehow, even though he knew he and Vash were not welcome, Knives also got the impression that this hostility wasn't reserved just for them. This was a cracked town, just waiting for the wrong person to come along and break it completely.

Knives wondered if he was that kind of person.  
_  
"I couldn't see someone in pain and not do something to help. I don't know how much you remember, but you used to do things like that..."_

The memory was cut off abruptly by Vash's voice, forced-cheerful as usual, chatting and directing. Knives followed him into a general store, waited patiently while he bought food and water and other things Knives didn't have words for. Just supplies. The walk to Terma wasn't really a long one, according to the woman behind the store counter, but it was long enough to kill the underprepared.

Something shadowy flickered at the corner of Knives' eye. He turned his head just enough to look out the storefront window while keeping half his attention on Vash, who seemed oblivious to any danger. Was Vash really on guard, and faking obtuseness? Knives couldn't tell. Didn't know Vash well enough to tell. But his act on the couch had been convincing, and Knives was perfectly prepared not to believe any front his brother put up. Or anything he said.

Nothing seemed out of the ordinary outside, not that Knives had much reference of 'ordinary' to go by. He looked away from the window just in time to see Vash shelling out a few slips of paper and a pile of coins onto the counter. Knives squinted, frowning slightly, working around bits of unfinished puzzle in his head to see if there was some opening for this odd exchange of vital merchandise for worthless scraps. It rang no bells, triggered no feelings, no memories. Must have never been very important to him, then. He disregarded it.

"Have a nice day," said the woman behind the counter.

Vash came over, smiling, and nudged Knives towards the shop door. "We're all set," he said. "Got some sunblock, you're going to need that. Another day and you'd really start looking like a lobster, huh?" He grinned.

"A what?" Knives asked, trying to decide whether or not to be offended.

"Lobster," said Vash. A hidden bell jingled when he pushed the door open. "Kind of edible sea creature. They get bright red when you cook 'em."

Back out on the street again, Vash slung his pack off long enough to stuff the new items inside.

"Sea creature?" Knives prodded casually, testing Vash's limits as much as filling out his vocabulary.

Vash hesitated. _Getting closer,_ Knives thought.

"Yeah, sea... a really big body of water," Vash replied. He slung his pack back over his shoulder, a very final-sounding thump.

Knives decided to test a little more. Vash was falling back on straight facts to save him from explaining context, but there was one fact it was rather difficult to avoid, and Knives hoped to pin his brother with it.

"Then is there water elsewhere?" Knives asked, smoothing his tone into pure, innocent curiosity. "This desert must not go on forever."

A definite catch in Vash's continuity there; Vash stopped, ostensibly to adjust the straps of his duffel, but Knives could tell he was struggling. "Yeah, there's water in other places," Vash said finally, "but probably not what anyone would call a sea. Actually, lobsters are extinct, so not a whole lot of people get the joke." He laughed, loud and a little too high. Knives bit back a wince. He didn't like Vash's attention-drawing behavior.

Another flicker in the corner of Knives' eye. Alleyway. He glanced to the side -- nothing there.

"How do you know they turn red when you cook them, then, if they don't exist?" Knives asked, falling back by half a step so Vash wouldn't catch any peripheral glimpses of Knives staring down side alleys.

"Read about it," Vash replied quickly, amiably, and Knives knew he'd gotten into a good swing now and it would take a lot more than questions about lobsters to break him out of it. If Knives kept playing on subtlety and nonchalance alone, Vash would easily beat him at his own game.

Knives let a few minutes pass in silence. He waved to a small child to ward off Vash's sideways glances, but there was no feeling in it and even though the child waved back cheerily enough, her parent looked terrified.

Vash filled the empty space between them with chatter. New Oregon, he said, was not a big city by any means, but it wasn't what people would call the "boonies," either. It was part of a cluster of towns that had built up between two major cities: Terma, which Knives had heard of before in passing, and a place called LR, the mention of which made Knives feel oddly triumphant and depressed at the same time. New Oregon was slightly out of the way of the main cluster because it had been established in a microclimate that was rarely if ever touched by bad weather, with the exception of a few renegade typhoons over the years. The cloudless, dust-free microclimate meant New Oregon was perfectly situated for a radio station, so the town's business and popularity had all built out of its original entertainment industry. Unlike most towns it hadn't been built in the shell of a crashed ship, and its few bits of technology and its enormous radio tower had all been hauled in from Terma and several more distant places like Geronimo and Sawyer's Cross.

Knives absorbed every bit of information he could get from both the lines and the spaces between, sketching a rough mental map of the surrounding area. Eventually Vash stopped talking, probably on the assumption that Knives' silence meant he wasn't listening.

There were no more shadowy flickers just out of sight, but the back of Knives' neck tingled incessantly, never allowing his guard a moment's rest. Torn and cramped muscles reacted poorly to the tension, and combined with the heat of the twin suns, Knives felt distinctly nauseous.

"What time is it?" he asked, shading his eyes and watching his feet in hopes of lessening his pounding headache.

Vash looked up, squinted, calculated, and said, "Past one. We're about at the far edge of town now, but this neighborhood is still pretty respectable. You hungry? We've got enough money for one or two sit-down meals, I think."

Knives considered the question, analyzed all the different hurts assailing his body, and realized that yes, one of them was hunger pain. "Yes," he said.

Vash looked around, getting his bearings, and said, "Ha! There we go." He pointed. Knives turned to look, saw nothing but another stone and false wood building, identical to all the others but for its paint job and its sign, which Knives couldn't read because Vash had not yet taught him how.

"They make really good sandwiches," Vash said, as if this explained everything, and led the way in.

-----------

Over lunch Vash explained the concept of the restaurant, which led to a mostly one-sided conversation about economics, which led to a more involved conversation about money. An argument about money, really. Even after they'd agreed to stop talking about it because they were drawing strange looks from other customers, Knives was still unconvinced that a paper and scrap metal could possibly have any worth, even if it was only assumed worth.

Despite the argument -- or maybe because of it -- Vash gave Knives the money to pay and nudged him through the process.

Someone definitely followed them out of the building.

Knives had let his guard down in the restaurant, too relieved to be off his feet and in shade to care who spied on them. But walking out the door set off such a raucous alarm in his head that he couldn't ignore it; there was someone following them and the ambient hostility in the air suddenly became anything but ambient -- tension all but physically choked him. Something was wrong. Very wrong.

"Vash," Knives murmured when they were back on the streets, heading east.

"Hn?" Vash asked, craning his neck to pinpoint the position of the sun. "Not bad time, only an hour lost and we haven't got a bus to catch or anyth--"

"Vash," Knives repeated, a little more sharply. The back of his neck felt like it was on fire, and not from sunburn. The restaurant was a good six blocks behind them now, and all the people seemed to have vanished along with the shops. The houses that surrounded them now barely looked occupied, although the faint sound of creaking shutters and locks turning said otherwise. They were far past the edges of what Vash had called the respectable part of town

"What?" Vash said, turning his gaze back to the dusty street and matching his stride to Knives'.

"We're being followed," said Knives, very quietly.

Vash's step faltered only for the briefest of moments. "I know," he murmured. "I think... I mean, it's Max. He probably hired some bodyguards to trail us."  
_  
Not a guard,_ Knives thought, spine prickling unpleasantly. The sun was past its zenith and shadows were seeping back into all the cracks and alleys, and they all seemed to be moving now; every lightning sideways glance caught a flicker of movement and every bird's shadow made Knives' flesh crawl.

"This is something else," Knives began, but before he could get all the words out there came a gutteral shout from somewhere behind them, followed by the sound of pounding feet.

"Shit!" Vash's voice. Vash was already moving and Knives couldn't follow him, couldn't get even the slightest glimpse of him, because Vash was so fast so fast too fast. Knives barely turned in time to see Vash, a flicker of denim and blonde spikes, putting himself between Knives and the danger.

And then Knives blacked out.

No... that wasn't quite right, he wasn't unconscious, he was still moving, he could _see_ himself moving in dim flashes like an old film _(an old what?)_ broken past repair with cigarette burns and water stains like the _Passion of Joan of Arc (who?)_ which Vash had hated when they were young and Knives and Rem had both loved.

There was screaming. Knives realized he was the one screaming. Something must have triggered this spontaneous breakdown, something sharp like the knife that had torn his gut open but hotter, louder, deafening. Knives' back burned like he'd been lashed, his fingers twisted, bones crackling sickening but right, so right, natural, simple natural defense, nothing more.

Gunshot. The sound of a gunshot ripped through Knives' skull. Trigger -- sharp, hot, loud and _oh god oh god the pain_. Memory-pain, nothing but a memory, but memory always hurt worst.

More than one shot. Five?

Five was from some other place and time; now they were countless and Knives came back to himself a little at a time, realized his hand had gone all deformed and his arm had followed it, just like Sky City with the boys, just like the time with Vincent and the knife.

He kept screaming, something at Vash maybe, or maybe at their attackers, he wasn't sure.

"Shit man, what the hell is that?"

"He's a goddamn demon!"

Another gunshot and another and then the terrified megalomaniacal blood-and-dust-colored craziness slipped back into place, and he lashed out until he wasn't the only one screaming except he knew he wasn't really screaming out loud anymore. Just inside his head. Only screaming loud enough for one person to hear.

Without warning, Vash invaded. Uninvited and unwelcome, a hard, bright presence in his mind, all shades of flickering red like sunset, like a horizon on fire, grabbing at Knives' flailing mind like a parent trying to catch hold of a child throwing a deadly temper tantrum. Knives tried to get rid of him, pushing and pulling every which way, but Vash was stronger because he was in control of himself and Knives wasn't. Control, Knives realized. Control is key.  
_  
I can control this thing._

It was hard, the hardest thing Knives had ever done, but he reigned in the power, felt it coursing through his veins like liquid nitrogen, burning cold, so cold. It threatened to tear him apart. He didn't let it. Instead he gathered it like a sheild, a sharp, thin shield, and he used it to shove Vash out with enough force to move a mountain.

A few deep breaths later he opened his eyes and realized the confused blur of memory was gone. The narrow street where he and Vash had been jumped was now filled with the sound of groans and bubbling coughs and someone crying. And Vash himself was standing bare inches from Knives' face, his right hand clamped tight around Knives' wrist and his left arm out of sight between them. Vash's face was twisted into some emotion Knives couldn't decipher.

Something cold prodded at Knives' chin, where Vash's left hand should have been. A thin, curved blade was pressed into the side of Vash's face, drawing a fine trickle of blood. Knives realized that the blade was his uncaptured hand.

"Mexican standoff again, huh," Vash said, and his voice was as pale as his face. "Are you done?"

Knives pushed his changed fingers harder against Vash's skin, more out of blank, morbid curiosity than cruelty, and in response the cold metal thing under his chin was shoved up another inch so that it became difficult to breathe. _Gun barrel,_ he though distantly. _Vash is going to shoot me._

_Again._

"What the hell am I?" Knives asked, hoarse from the pressure on his neck.

Vash loosened his grip on Knives' wrist and lowered the a few inches. He looked even paler, if that were possible. "You don't..." he began, bewilderment creeping into his expression. "How can you not know? Use that kind of power and still not know?"

"It's not by choice," Knives growled.

A beat of silence, broken by moans of pain in the background.

"Can we maybe not kill each other?" Vash asked, tilting his head slightly away from Knives' hand.

Knives slowly removed his bladed hand from Vash's face and neck. Vash stepped back, letting go of Knives completely and holding up his hands in a gesture of peace. There was no gun _in_ his left hand -- the hand itself seemed to be the weapon. "Truce?" he asked.

"What?"

"Truce... now is not the time for English lessons. You know, uh, an agreement not to fight."

"I wasn't fighting you."

"Well something definitely put me under the mistaken impression... look, can we not have this talk now? People are hurt."

Knives blinked, looked away from Vash for the first time only to see three or four hulking thugs and one thin, weasely type all sprawled on the ground. All of them were bleeding from somewhere or other, some worse than others, and the soft sound of sobbing came from the entrance of an alley where a younger boy was crouched over one of the most badly injured.

Vash took Knives' silence as an answer and made as if to go help the kid in the alley. But he barely got two steps before a loud voice called out, "What the hell you think you're doin'?" The young boy looked up at the sound and dashed away down the alley, out of sight.

One of the bigger guys, sporting only a bad cut on one leg and a twisted arm, had dragged himself up against a wall and was now glaring daggers at Vash. He was the one who'd spoken.

Vash jerked his head towards the man lying in front of the alley. "He'll bleed out if I don't help him." Vash started to take another step.

The man ground his teeth, fingers twitching as if itching for a gun. "You stay the hell away from him," he growled. "I'll kill ya if you touch him."

"He's gonna die," Vash snapped, turning his back on the guy against the wall, but he'd hardly been moving a split-second before a chunk of rock came sailing out of the alley entrance and went just past his head, forcing him to duck.

The little boy had returned with an armload of crumbling bricks and was breaking off pieces to throw. "Demons!" he shouted, tears streaking through the dirt smudges on his face. "You're both evil! Stay away from my dad!" He punctuated sentences with bits of brick, forcing Vash to back out of his throwing range.

"But--" Vash started, reaching out to the child only to get whacked in the shoulder by a particularly hard-thrown rock.

Throughout this exchange Knives had been fighting back the power that still roiled through him. At last, both his hands were returned completely to normal. Knives immediately grabbed the back of Vash's collar with one hand, the two dropped packs with the other, and started walking away from the scene. The lingering adrenaline coursing through his veins kept the worst of his pain and fatigue at bay.  
_  
"Get out! Fucking monsters!"_

_"Demon!"_

_"If you show your faces in this town again I swear to fucking God I'll--"_

Knives pulled Vash around a corner so they could no longer see the downed attackers.

"Shit," Vash whispered, and Knives realized he was shaking.

"Vash," Knives said calmly.

"Shit," Vash repeated, looking everywhere but at Knives. "I didn't even hear them coming. I _told_ Max, I _told_ him not to interfere--"

"Vash," Knives said, louder.

"Hell, that guy was some little kid's father, how was I supposed to know--"  
_  
"Vash,"_ Knives snapped, and hit Vash harder than was necessary on the shoulder.  
_  
"Ow,_ what?" Vash snapped right back.

"I don't know the way out of town," Knives replied, levelly.

Vash looked at him for a long moment in open-mouthed silence, but Knives was not uncomfortable under his gaze -- or at least no more uncomfortable than could be expected. There was finally a new feeling between them, like something had broken, and now Vash knew Knives was strong and Knives knew Vash would tell the truth because he was afraid of that strength. It was almost like equality.

Almost.

"Like it never happened, huh?" Vash said finally. "You're fine, just like that."

"No," Knives said shortly. "I'm not fine. Let's leave."

Vash seemed to accept that.

Knives' brother was quiet for another minute, looking up at the sky and the surrounding streets, judging time and distance, like he had done earlier. "All right," he said. "I know where we are. Just follow me."

Knives followed.

-------------

"I'm stuck in this dream it's changing me I am becoming  
The me that you know had some second thoughts  
He's covered with scabs and he is broken and sore  
The me that you know doesn't come around much  
That part of me isn't here anymore

Hiding backwards inside of me  
I feel so unafraid."  
-- Nine Inch Nails, "The Becoming"


	15. The Nobodies

Author's Note: First update in several months; I'm sorry, I'm sorry. No excuses. Or rather, same excuses as always, which are so old now they might as well count as none. But I did promise to finish this story and I'm not prepared to break that promise, so never lose hope for a new chapter.

----------  
Chapter Fifteen: The Nobodies  
----------

"You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed."  
-- from _The Little Prince_ by Antoine de Saint Exupery  
----------

The funeral was quiet. Not cold-quiet like the funerals of Meryl's memory, all those great-aunts and great-uncles dropping like flies and each one so important in theory but so very, very insignificant in unspoken fact. Her church always battled the outdoor heat with vicious ferocity as if trying to strike the chill of death deep into the bones of the living; relatives breathed down her neck with that cloying musty smell of stale cigarette smoke buried under layers of perfume; her skirts were too short for her mother but too long for the bastards in the back corner -- those cousins or friends of cousins who never grew past the mental age of twelve. Those were the days when Meryl watched her step so closely that she never noticed the sky.

This funeral was quiet because no one spoke. Not a lack of speech like the pursed-lip silent treatment of a disapproving aunt, where the thoughts are there so loud you could hear them with your ears plugged; no. This was real silence. Respectful silence. Meryl was amazed no one else could hear her thinking; she sounded so loud to herself.

Milly stood beside her, but not too close. The larger woman leaned into the warm breeze, hands clasped loosely in front of her, just as quiet as the others. Meryl wondered if this was the sort of funeral Milly had grown up with -- in fact, Meryl wondered if _anyone_ else had grown up like herself. Certainly no one in Sky City had.

She hadn't felt this lonely in a long time. Milly had been hurt that Meryl and Vash hadn't included her in his decision to leave, and she was now giving Meryl the guilt trip treatment of pure innocence. The Doctor was gone and none of the ship's people, not even Natalie and Michael, were willing to interact much with the two outsider girls. Meryl understood their reasons -- even the open-minded folks like Natalie needed to hold onto a measure of respectability in this time of upheaval, and the more scared the people were, the less likely they would be to listen to a leader who fraternized with the so-called enemy. So Meryl didn't blame anyone for keeping their distance.

But... still.

The sun was setting behind the highest of the dunes, painting the desert in a thousand shades of fire. Shadows from the small field of crosses stretched out nearly long enough to touch the base of the ship's twisted hull. They'd been burying their dead here for a long time. Maybe, somewhere deep down, they'd always known they were going to end up on the planet.

People came and went quietly, unobtrusively. Meryl saw Michael bring Tom out for a few minutes -- Tom carried a pair of crutches, but didn't use them; his brother supported him all the way out and back. They stood, quietly, and didn't cry, and Mike laid a small white something at the base of the cross. Meryl never went closer to see what it was. It wasn't her business.

She watched Mike half-carrying Tom back into the ship and wondered, with a sharp pang, where Vash was now.

"Ma'am," said a voice softly in her ear. Milly was there, not as cool and distant as she had been for the past day, as if the spirit of letting-go engendered by the funeral had also affected her grudge against Meryl.

"Yes, Milly?" Meryl cringed inwardly at the sound of her own voice, but she had been dutifully quiet -- no one glanced her way. Still, she felt too loud here. She hoped whatever Milly had to say would be quick.

Milly gave her partner a small smile. "We've been here longer than anyone, ma'am," she murmured. "We can leave now, if you want."

Meryl glanced one last time at the grave and wondered, guiltily, _did I say goodbye the way Vash would have wanted to?_ She was partly here on his behalf, after all, but all she could seem to think about was how uncomfortable she was, and all she could remember were the oppressive days of her youth. Surely Vash would have done or said something meaningful.  
_  
But meaningful to him isn't the same as meaningful to you,_ she told herself. _You can't expect to do everything the way he would. No one can._

"Milly..." Meryl whispered self-consciously, raising a hand to the pale blue ties of her cape and twisting them between two fingers. "Do you think, should I... do something? For Vash?"

Milly looked down for a second, then shook her head. "If he hadn't already said goodbye," she said, "he wouldn't have gone away."

"But he did want to come to the funeral, so there must be..."

"We've been here long enough, ma'am," Milly said firmly. "Mr. Vash doesn't need us to be here anymore."

Those words rang in Meryl's head as she followed Milly in a carefully catlike walk back to the ship, padding along toe-to-heel to make the least amount of sound humanly possible. _He doesn't, _Meryl thought. _He really doesn't need us at all -- not here, and not with him. Did he leave us behind to clean up his mess, to get rid of us, both...?_

But they were cruel thoughts, and she doubted them strongly. Vash had left them behind with some good intention: to protect them, maybe, or to save them from the fear and heartache of caring for Knives. But as was so often the case with Vash's good intentions, they were beginning to backfire.

It had been a long while since Meryl could say she wasn't addicted to a man. This loneliness and disillusionment was familiar; this was the feeling that had driven her away from home, into big-business social climbing and later into dangerous field work. That half-crazed determination was coming back to her now. And no matter what reasons Vash may have had to leave her behind, she _would_ follow him, and she _would_ find him and stay with him.

This wasn't a case of infatuation anymore; and if it was love, it wasn't the kind that sonnets were written about. Meryl Strife did not give up. And if Vash hadn't figured that out yet, she'd just have to keep coming back until he did.

---------

"They can't have gotten all that far. Vash travels fast, I know, but Knives is still wounded. They'll be slow, maybe holing up through the white-heat hours..."

"Meryl..."

"Would they be past New Oregon yet? It's been three days, surely, even hurt --"

"Ma'am. Should we be doing this?"

"I told Vash we'd catch up with them in the desert. It's not like they aren't expecting us, Milly."

"But I really don't think... I don't think Mr. Vash wants us around that much."

Meryl gritted her teeth behind the pencil-thin white line of her lips. "I don't think Mr. Vash is in much of a position to argue the point, Milly,"she said pointedly. "And we're going to do this. I don't care what Vash thinks he needs. We may not be on Bernardelli's payroll anymore, but our job was damned important and we know how to do it better than anyone."

Milly sighed, knowing Meryl was right but reluctant nonetheless. "We can't even afford to eat..." she said, more to hear Meryl's counter than to actually talk her out of it.

"The Doctor left some things to Vash in his will," Meryl said stiffly. "People he treated on planetside insisted on paying him, but they don't use any currency here. Natalie's given us the money to take to Vash and it _will_ be in our possession until then. He just has to get the appropriate amount in the end."

Milly nodded. "Well," she said. "I guess Mr. Vash needs whatever help he can get."

"Don't I know it," Meryl said vehemently. "We'll leave early tomorrow."

"Yes, ma'am."

Neither of them noticed, as they parted ways to their own rooms, the pair of bright green eyes that had been watching them from behind a corner flitting away into the dark.

----------

Loading up with provisions in the morning didn't take long. Meryl had expected some delicate footwork, some negotiation, even some haggling if the tension wasn't too hair-trigger thin, but what she got was three large packages handed over wordlessly and a sigh of relief from the errand boy who'd brought them down to the Jeep. Sky City wanted them gone, end of story.

She checked through the packs -- well-organized, thorough, clearly assembled by someone who knew travel. These people didn't travel. So who...

"Care packages courtesy of the City's scouts and traders," said a voice behind her. Meryl turned, sand squeaking under her sensible shoes. Natalie stood back in the deeper shadow next to the hull of the ship, hands deep in her heavily-darned pockets. "Who would mostly be me," she added. "Not that I don't think you ladies know how to pack for the open road. Figured you wouldn't mind the extra nudge."

"It's really that bad, isn't it?" Meryl asked, losing her harsh authority for a moment. She looked smaller than usual.

"Is is any worse than a planetside city? People are people. An' we're more close-minded than most. Isolation does that."

Meryl looked down.

Natalie moved out of the cooler shadows and leaned against the Jeep on one hand. "It's bad, yeah," she said gently. "It'll prob'ly get worse. And outsiders are going to have to change that, because the people here are gonna need to see that the world is bigger than a few thousand cubic yarz and mostly it's made of all the same old stories. But you two can't do all that, not now. So get out while the getting's good."

Meryl sighed. "I guess I just always thought that the lost technology was... greater than the rest of us, somehow. Everyone planetside does. We've all got to believe in _something_, and if we could believe in the machines and the people who built them, there'd somehow be a better future... somehow. But that's just stupid to think, isn't it, stupid and human."

Natalie shrugged. "Being human's just being human, not being stupid. But the ships, the technology -- there's no future in them. They're our past. We people who live on the ships aren't forward-thinking or futuristic, we're practically ancient barbarians compared to the brand new civilization growin' like a fungus right under our noses. It's all so ass-backwards sometimes I have trouble figuring out where _I_ stand in it all, forget leading a bunch of idiots even more narrow-minded than myself."

"You don't strike me as narrow-minded."

"You'd be suprised at the number of things I can't stand," Natalie said with a wry smile.

The "front door" -- the hatch most closely resembling level with the ground, anyway -- slid open, admitting the trenchcoat-clad figure of Milly into the rapidly warming air. She waved vaguely at Meryl and started making her way over.

"First and foremost of those things being messy goodbyes," Natalie added. She grasped Meryl's hand tightly. "You girls take care," she said in a matter-of-fact tone that betrayed no sign of either relief or sorrow. Then she turned, clapped Milly on the shoulder as they passed, and was gone.

"Let's go, Milly," Meryl said decisively, trying to inject some of her old authoritative pep into her tone. Milly responded with an equally less-than-genuine grin, clambering into the front passenger's seat as Meryl checked the air in the tires one last time, an almost unconscious act that was the product of long years and hard lessons.

Occupied with finding the too-well-hidden lever that moved the driver's seat forward, Meryl didn't notice when there was a very slight wobble and dip from the Jeep, as if someone other than herself or Milly had been shifting position.

Meryl found the lever, her feet finally found the pedals, and in less than two minutes they were traveling top-speed towards New Oregon and the rising suns.

--------

The Jeep had been gutted and patched extensively, as had any automobile on the planet that could be bought for the price of a reasonably healthy tomas and two weeks' salary. Only rich snots in wooden mansions could afford new vehicles, because they could afford them custom-built. Nothing common was ever new, not on Gunsmoke.

And these Frankensteinian Jeeps, as could easily be discovered with a little deduction and a little investigation, contained far more niches and storage spaces than your average Earth-design vehicle. It didn't take a genius to figure out that planetside designs had adapted over the decades, becoming skewed toward the lightweight and the fuel-efficient, with lots of gaps for more surplus water. Driving a two-and-a-half-ton, gas-guzzling heap of metal in the open desert with only a canteen or two to your name was utter suicide.

A little wrangling and twisting and one very carefully placed laser shot gave Jessica all the room her slight body needed to lie comfortably underneath the two back seats. As long as nothing heavier than the blankets and provisions chose to sit down on the seat above her head, she'd be perfectly safe. And she hadn't been inconsiderate; between her tightly-wedged knees rested an extra sack of dry food, a change of clothes, and what she hoped were all the travel essentials. Granted she knew markedly less about long-distance travel than the two women above her, as she'd never done it before... but surely it couldn't be that hard.

Jessica bit her lip and closed her eyes, shutting away the claustrophic sight of the seat-bottom bare centimeters from her nose. It was getting warmer. _At least,_ she thought desperately, _I won't have to worry about sunburn under here._

There was nothing to do but wait, and thinking about how hot and thirsty and miserable she was going to be in a few hours wasn't going to do her any good. When they were far enough away from Sky City, Miss Meryl and Miss Milly wouldn't be able to afford the time it would take to drive Jessica all the way back, so they would let her stay with them. It would work. It really would.

She had to see this thing through. Brad and the Doctor, two of the three driving forces of Jessica's life, were gone. There was nothing she could do but hunt down the third.

Keeping her breathing even and her heart rate low by sheer force of will, Jessica finally managed to doze off.

----------

"They're off."

Michael looked up from his paperwork, registered what Natalie had said, and sighed. "No hard feelings?"

"Only the usual kind," Natalie replied with a shrug. "They don't blame us for anything. It's more than we'll probably get from the rest of the world."

"Then it's over." Michael closed his eyes and tried not to choke on his relief.

She decided not to burst his bubble just yet. Let the boy learn the facts of life as they came. First and foremost being that nothing ever ended, not really.

"Mike..." Natalie said after a moment, feeling around for the easiest way to break the news and coming up with none. "Jess went with them. Stowed away. Thinks no one knows, but she's got zip talent for stealth, y'know how she is."

Michael hesitated a moment, but the news didn't feel strange as he turned it over in his head. The young girl had really lost everything now. Everything but the ship itself, which he supposed had rejected her when it rejected Vash. She would follow her idol now. He was the only constant she had left.

"She always wanted to travel," he heard himself saying dully.

Natalie sat down next to him on the bench in front of his worktop and put an arm around his shoulders. "You gotta keep it together, Jones. We've lost some good people. But we're gonna come back from it -- we always do. And I need you, everyone here needs you and thinkers like you to help lead them through the hatches and into the open air. Okay?"

Michael nodded glumly.

Natalie punched him lightly on the shoulder and stood up. "Get some rest, kid," she said. "Tomorrow'll be better."

Michael stared at his paperwork for a long time after she was gone, wondering if -- in this crazy upside-down and backwards world he'd been thrown into -- her words would ever be true.  
-----------


End file.
